The D-Word

Tonight I feel the need to share how easier it feels to breathe.

All because the dreaded d-word... Deployment... has almost reached its much-sought after, blessedly inevitable conclusion.

Can I just take a moment to express how much I detest that word? Deployment. It should not be possible to deploy a human being. It should not be necessary to use and distribute human beings systematically and strategically. This world should not feel the need to fight and war and hate and discriminate. I am convinced that true world peace is still possible if only mankind learned how to love one another without condition. Surely that can't be so difficult? I love my husband without condition. I love my beautiful little nephew without condition. I love my family and my husband's family... you guessed it, without condition. Sure, it's not always easy and I understand that people quarrel. But why can't people quarrel without an arsenal of nuclear weapons on hand just in case other sides get too unruly? Why can't people just love and respect each other on an individual, personal level? Because honestly, it would be a whole lot easier on a whole lot of people if deployments stopped being this definite forgone necessity of life.

In completely unrelated news, the author of this blog post is a bit naive when it comes to the nature of her fellow human beings.

But yes, our first deployment is winding down. We have spent the past several months apart, him in another country, me back in my hometown and my home state, spending time with family and filling the void with Buffy the Vampire Slayer television marathons and countless Glee fanfictions. We have gone through the typical emotional cycle of a deployment: the beginning, which sucked, the middle, which sucked, and the end, which...

IS GOING TO BE AWESOME.

I would so type in all caps for this entire thing if I didn't think it'd get annoying fast. I am that excited. I am so relieved that we're getting through this and finally envisioning that beautiful bright light at the end of this dark, dank tunnel that smells like elephants and expired cream cheese. It has been a joy and a treasure to be home for a little while and have time with family. I've loved going to the movies with my grandparents and watching my nephew learn to walk. I've laughed, I've cried, I've looked to the future and sighed. I'm so thankful for my mother, who has given me the opportunity to stay with her and have this time. It's been fun swimming and getting my laptops fixed a billion times by my awesome brother-in-law and watching all the best and worst summer television shows. And make no mistake about it: I will miss my family again when the time comes to leave this state and meet my husband on his base.

But still.

I AM SO EXCITED.

In fact, I'm far too excited to keep typing away and sitting here. I need to bounce. And get up and dance. And maybe sing some corny love songs really loudly and off-key. Oh, and I guess I should quickly make a list of everything that's been accomplished these past several months of deployment, just because that was my intent when I created this thing in the first place. Goals have been met! It must be documented! I should probably cut back on the sugar!

1. I've started graduate school.
2. We've met our monetary savings goal.
3. Dustin learned a new language.
4. He also grew a beard.
5. I've written about a third of a new novel-in-progress.
6. I've lost ten pounds!
7. It is now a habit to run every day.
8. Our plant has grown into a fine young lad.
9. We've grown EVEN MORE IN LOVE.
10. This deployment is being TKO'd!

I'm sure there's more, but I'm out. Way too happy to keep typing about being happy.

Peace, love, and general merriment for all!

Dead Doors

Today marked my father's sixteenth birthday spent up in Heaven. I have a singular home video that contains him in it; it's a short one, maybe five minutes long altogether, and I've seen it about ten thousand times. The year is 1991, New Years Eve, and my whole family is gathered at my uncle's house for a celebratory party and to watch the ball drop. My grandmother holds the camera, as evidenced by the fact that everyone grins and says, "Hey Shirley!" into the lens as they walk by. The camera moves constantly, occasionally focusing on someone as they speak into it, and it's one minute in before I finally catch a glimpse of my dad, who holds a cup up and says, "Soda for me tonight." He's wearing a purple button-up and a gold chain around his neck, and his dark hair matches my own in all but length, parted in the middle and groomed for the party. He says those four short words with a smile under a thick mustache, and his voice is gentle, happy, content. As a one-year-old, I toddle in front of the camera as it moves to the next room to get everyone in motion. My aunt laughs so loudly in the background that my grandmother swivels around to find her, and she strikes a pose in her cute black dress and chirps, "Hi ma!" with a red solo cup in her hand, a thick and fluffy 90's hairdo, and that Northern accent that's unmistakably her. There's music playing, something funky and fast, loud and all-encompassing. My dad walks past the lens unexpectedly, and 21 years in the future I hang onto that movement, follow it until he's out of sight once more, fixated on the screen for another peek.

The video stops and starts back up a moment later, but this time it's ten seconds until the ball drops and my grandmother is pointing the camera directly at my mom, who is holding me in her arms, and my dad who stands beside her. I'm drinking milk from a bottle, holding it all on my own, and my dad leans over and kisses my cheek. I lean further into my mom, for some reason I cannot fathom now trying to duck out of the way of the kiss, but it still lands, and my dad smiles before turning to watch the ball on the television as people start counting down for it to fall.

When it finally falls and people scream out their excitement and wishes for a great new year, my dad lifts his pinky at the video camera, grins, and says, "Happy New Year!" People go around the room kissing each other on the cheek and repeating that phrase over and over again, and I catch two more glimpses of my dad, who tells my aunt, "I almost forgot about you!" as he kisses her cheek, and then again when he says the same thing to my grandmother and leans so close to the camera it's impossible to see for a second as he pecks her on the cheek as well.

The screen goes black. A new home video starts moments later, one where my sister and I are dancing with pompoms to some Dirty Dancing music. The video with my dad in it is over.

It's always been a pretty personal experience for me to watch that video on both the day he was born and on the day when he died, I guess as a sort of silent acknowledgement of his life and of the memories people have of him, the memories that keep him alive in our hearts. Unfortunately, I don't have any real memories of him at all - I have only the stories my family has told me about him, that home video I re-watch every year, and the handful of pictures where he's lounging about with my mom or uncle. I never really watched it with anyone else on this day, preferring to keep to my bedroom and have it as sort of a memory that's only his and mine. But I have to say, I'm glad that my husband joined me this year and watched it with me. We sat on the floor in front of the tv together and just enjoyed the moment, and afterward, we talked. About memories, about loved ones lost, about unfair deaths, about what my dad and I would talk about if he were alive today and I sent him a birthday phone call - we just talked, and it lessened the sting of loss to know that no matter what we go through or what has already happened, we're here for each other and we're in this whole life thing together.

Of course, we couldn't stay somber and serious for long, and we were already on the floor, so a wrestling match quickly arose. My husband and I tried tickling each other, then I got out of his hold and we ran around the living room, trying to catch each other. When my husband ran off suddenly toward the stairs and then took to them two at a time to reach the bedroom before me, I knew I couldn't catch him, and so I went at a more leisurely pace. The bedroom door was shut when I arrived at it - not really thinking that he might have locked it, I pressed against the door handle, shoved with my whole body, and -

POP. The door slammed open harder than I expected. I sort of stumbled into the room, and my husband gaped openly at me for a second before saying, "What?! What did you just do?!"

So long story short, we discovered today that our bedroom door doesn't really lock too well. We both locked ourselves out of it moments later, and he said, "Watch how cool I am!" before kicking it open with a backwards flying kick.

... Gotta admit, it looked pretty cool. =)

The Bubble of Bad

There are days I want to remember forever.

Some days make me want to go to sleep just so I'll wake up the next morning and start again. They aren't very frequent, but they happen to me like they happen to everyone, the bad day, the stressful day, the day that makes you want to curl up in bed with a book and take yourself to another land for a while, or eat a whole gallon of chocolate ice cream, or call your mother and be a kid again. Sometimes it feels like those days last forever, too, which really stinks because then it feels like I'm trapped in a bubble of bad, and no one will come around to pop it.

But then there are days like today.

After waking up from a bad dream to see my husband staring at me with the cute smile he only ever shows around me, and after telling him my bad dream and then hearing his reaction, I instantly knew that today was going to rock. Because I want to remember every detail of this Sunday, I'll start there.

Me: "I had a dream last night that we got a dog and it died." =(

Husband: "Well that's good honey. I hate dogs!" =)

My husband instantly popped the bubble of potential bad, like he usually does, and we laughed while I tried to tickle him and then we got into a wrestling match of epic proportions. It involved biting, pillow fights, and threats to strangle my stuffed animals. Oh, and also enormous amounts of tickling from both parties. I told him that I had to pee, early morning and all, during our tickle session and he proceeded to tickle all the harder and poke my tummy. For anyone involved in a wrestle/tickle fest with your significant other in the future, I recommend not revealing that you have to pee. Too much ammunition is given over to the other fighter in the process, and it's so not worth the trouble.

So yes, this is the type of day that I wished could last forever. Just a day where we're both together, and playful, and armed with some pretty hefty pillows. I think at one point during our most recent pillow fight, I just sort of stopped and let him whack me with the pillow a few times, just so that I could take it all in and store the moment in my memory for as long as possible. Sometimes, you just gotta pause and let the life you're living wash over you. Smell the roses, feel the pillow connect with your head, same difference really. Thinking about the future sometimes overwhelms me, and I think so in depth about so much that isn't even gonna happen for another six months. But on days like today, my mind stops whirling into the future and basks in the glow of the present, and all is right in the world.

Now, I'm gonna go eat a chocolate chip cookie and squeeze the stuffing out of my husband.

'Cuz that's how we show affection. =D

Bills are Diseased Mosquitos

It's sometimes weird to think that I'm an adult right now.

When I think back to my childhood, what comes to mind isn't even remotely adult-like. I think of all the blanket forts my friends and I created and how they always seemed to fall on our heads while we were in them - not the best shelter maker out there, no sirree. I think of all the times my poppy gave me my three dollar allowance each week and I'd rush to the Dollar Store and buy three exciting yet pretty useless toys (toy handcuffs, some sticker books, maybe a coloring book or some off-brand silly putty). Not the best money saver either, no sirree. Then I recall all those stuffed animals I used to saturate my bedroom, living room, bathroom, and well, pretty much every room in my house. I had beanie babies coming out my ears, and let's not get started on those annoying furry creatures that never stopped talking (what were they called? Furbies?). Mine never used to fall asleep until I got frustrated and yanked the batteries out of their backsides - not the most patient of parents, I reckon. But I will say that when I found my favorite stuffed animal, I sure did stick with him. All the other little unliving creatures I hung out with have long since been given to younger family members or thrown away while my back was turned (thanks Momma), but good old Blue still sleeps with me at night. I got Blue when I was eleven years old one Christmas morning and we've not parted since. He's a blue stuffed unicorn, and I used to make friends wash their hands before they touched him. Heck, I don't think I even let them touch him with freshly washed hands half the time.

Now my husband likes to hang Blue by the neck on our ceiling fan while I'm otherwise occupied. We end up wrestling for a few minutes, wherein I threaten to splash him with cold water while he's sleeping if he ever does it again (because we all know that when he's sleeping is the only time I'd ever manage to splash him successfully - why's he gotta be so strong anyway?).

So yeah, childhood wasn't that long ago for me, and so it's weird to think that now I'm paying bills on time and following my credit score like a diligent little nerd and traveling to exotic places (i.e. the Grand Canyon) with my husband. My momma raised me well, she did, especially when it comes to finances, and I know all these awesome tricks to a successful credit score and, ultimately, to a successful life. When I was a teenager, I remember thinking all the time, "Why do all these adults make paying bills sound so difficult? It's no rocket science - you earn the money, you pay the bills." And that's pretty much how it's been so far. Paying bills is probably the easiest thing I've ever done - and also probably the thing that makes the most sense to me. I've juggled our bills so that we're paying nearly the same amount toward them each paycheck, so yay balance! Unfortunately, some wonky things have been happening to my husband's student loan account, and they randomly approved us for a forbearance that we never wanted. We've been paying it manually so that we could still pay on it every month and just ignore that whole weird forbearance thing, you see.

I seem to have accidentally paid his student loan twice this month as a result.

It's all good because I just juggled money around a bit more, but still. Paying that bill twice in one month even though we don't even have to pay on it at all until December irked me, like a pesky mosquito flying around the house poking me with its disease-riddled mouth every now and again (do mosquitoes even have mouths?). Ah, the joys of being an adult with diseased bills!

In related news, I haven't done anything arghh worthy yet this week, so we're looking good!

The Key Issue Here

Kay so, my husband and I accomplished a great feat of epic stupidity tonight, the likes of which far surpassed and exceeded my own expectations of idiocy. The thing of it is, it didn't make me feel so stupid when we did it three nights ago, and the first time it was actually sort of funny. But the second time? It definitely didn't make me want to chuckle-snort. At one point, I think I might have sob-snorted in an attempt to make it a chuckle-snort, but that turned out sort of disgusting sounding and made me look really weird in the face, so let us not discuss that anymore. The fact of it is, three nights ago, my husband and I went out on a nice relaxing date at this new (for us) Italian restaurant, a local hotspot in this area that we haven't fully explored yet, and I bought some ice cream to take home with me because it required a spoon for consumption and we were ready to relax at the condo. Here's the math that was in my head and the reasoning behind going home to eat the ice cream:

And there you have it. Holding my ice cream like a precious piece of fine gold, I walked hand in hand with my husband to the front door of our condo, fully expecting to hear the heavenly sound of keys jingling together as he moved to unlock the door...

We stared at each other.

A blinking contest ensued.

We spoke at the same time: "Aren't you going to unlock the door?"

Why no, no we weren't going to unlock the door, because neither of us remembered a couple hours prior to pick the keys up off the kitchen counter. We had to wait around in panic mode for two hours with no idea as to how to get inside our condo, and then finally call up a general manager guy with a skeleton key to all the condos for help on a Friday night because MY ICE CREAM WAS MELTING.

Oh, and we had no place to sleep and all our stuff was locked away from us and the main office isn't open on weekends so maybe we might have to sleep outside in the cold with the rattlesnakes and skunks and huge and hairy spiders. That too.

But the general manager must have been having a good night because he drove all the way out here from wherever he lives and unlocked our door for us. Yay manager person with a skeleton key that lets him go into whatever condo he wants whenever he wants! This all happened three nights ago, and we finally got inside, grabbed our keys, and exclaimed that we couldn't believe we'd done that. Also, we promised that it would never happen again, that we'd both be more aware of the key's location at all times and especially when we leave the premises.

... We lied.

Here it is, Tuesday afternoon the following week. My husband just gets home from work, we're both hungry, and so we decide to go out for a sit down meal and some nice wind-down conversation. We've been married for exactly ten months come tomorrow and the newlywed phase pretty much sums up our time together. It's great because everyday is like another date, or rather the date is one long never-ending bout of awesome togetherness. So it's a Tuesday and we're ready to continue with the date that is our lives, I get my purse, we spruce ourselves up a little (I bathe and everything!), and we're all smiley and lovey dovey as we walk out the front door. Well of course, as soon as the door shuts, the sound wakes me up from the splendor of the evening like a gunshot ringing through the night air, and I stare in abject horror at my husband's keyring that seems suspiciously absent of a front door key.

He seems to notice the direction of my wide-eyed gaze.

We blink at each other, silent.

And then as one unit, we exclaim to the closed door: "You've got to be kidding me!"

Instead of going out and just enjoying our date, we're suddenly both frustrated, feeling stupid, defeated, and just a tad bit like we were just swooshed into last week's fiasco where my ice cream melted before I could eat it and we had to beg the general manager to give up his night life for a fun ride to our condo. I wanted to call him up right away again, but my husband absolutely refused to ask that guy to unlock our door just days after we locked ourselves out the last time, so we were pretty much stuck. That same horror from days earlier flashed before my mind again, with the rattlesnakes and the huge hairy spiders and the smelly disease-infested skunks. We decided to do the smart thing, however, and googled lock picking tools via smartphone and then drove to Wal-Mart to pick up said lock picking tools. We were gonna be awesome and solve our own problem without anyone knowing just how stupid we were, to lock ourselves out twice in three days. Pfft, us do something like that? No way! This time, we were gonna be heroes armed with lock picks and torque wrenches! The masked keyhole plungers!

... Well, we didn't wear masks. For obvious reasons.

Come to find out, the lock picking tools were way too big, and they wouldn't fit at all into our keyhole, but my husband managed to use an old credit card to slide his way inside our condo. It was surprisingly (read: scarily) easy and took all of two seconds for him to nudge his way inside with a mere flick of a card and some upper arm strength. Let this be a lesson to all who read this: use dead bolts for your doors! It is WAY too easy to card your way into houses without dead bolts!

All in all, we both felt really stupid for locking ourselves out again, but my husband saved the day and we didn't even have to beg the general manager for help this time (and wow, I just experienced my first ever funny typo - I'd typed the word bed instead of beg. Good thing I caught that!). We also discovered the new remedy to locking our keys inside our house and will be employing it whenever we find ourselves in that situation in the future.

... Not that we plan to be in that situation again in our future. The keys will come with us from now on!

Erm, hopefully.

Slightly Crispy

I've been meaning to make a blog for a while now, but inspiration for it finally came last night in the form of a pan's handle clocking in at exactly 400 degrees Fahrenheit. My husband and I have been living away from home these past three weeks and have had to apply creativity to cooking utensils - our current condo came equipped with basic kitchen supplies, but surprisingly no large baking dishes. We sure do have a wine opener though. I guess the people in management around here have their priorities well established. Anyway, we used a pan as our baking dish of the night to cook four chicken leg quarters (turned out delicious, baked in butter and spiced just right).

Halfway through our cooking, we drove to the nearest gas station to return some Redbox movies, an action that caused some tension between husband and wife for reasons that might not be readily apparent. Men and women coexist with a sort of fragile truce, I'm absolutely sure. They have to, considering the fact that they're so different. Sometimes my husband and I are like night and day, like salt and pepper, like oil and water, like... you get the picture, I'm sure. We see things differently. I wanted to return our rentals last night because we'd already had them long enough to incur the wrath of the late fee. He, however, was under the belief that since we already kept the movies too long, one more day wouldn't make much difference, and wanted to leave the movie returning fun for tomorrow night instead. Our heads clashed, logic flew back and forth, and finally he threw his hands up in defeat and we returned the movies huffy and annoyed with each other.

Of course, by the time we got back to take the chicken out, I'd plum forgotten that there was a pan in the oven cooking on high. He took the pan out using a pot holder and set it on the stove. I started to get the ingredients out of the cupboard to cook up some quick noodles on the stove...

This doesn't end well.

I burned my entire right hand and spilled my pot of water I'd been trying to boil. What a mess, what a painful and ridiculous mess. My husband immediately sprang into action, of course, and put my hand under cold running water while he fetched a bowl of ice water for it, all the while with me blubbering in the background. We'd been so annoyed with each other over something so small just seconds earlier, but as soon as the fiery burn scorched the DNA from my fingers, all I wanted to do was lay my head against his shoulder and cry my eyes out, and all he wanted to do was take the pain away and stop my crying.

He woke his mom up, calling her to ask how best to fix me, and thanks to her suggestion, he cracked the eggs we had in the fridge, separated out the egg whites, and then we dunked my hand in that for a few hours until a protective layer of collagen formed around the wounds. Now, a day later, my hand feels a lot better and there's only some discoloration and a blister or two to show for it, and I can't help thinking that life is really sort of funny sometimes. One minute we're annoyed with each other to the point of not speaking, and then God tells us we're being awfully silly with a well-placed pan.

In the end, despite our differences and occasional petty fights, we make a good team. I saved us five bucks on more late fees last night, and he saved my hand from what I'm sure would have been some mighty awful scarring.

Go team Stitt! :)