This is the world we live in...

Ours is a society where celebrities rule the roost, they tell us what to wear, what to drink, and in some scary occasions how to think and who to vote for. People in this country have become so celebrity obsessed it's crazy. I loved Montel Williams for what he said when Heath Ledger died:

"I gotta tell you, my heart goes out to his family, but I have been repulsed, honestly, by all the coverage; and here's a question I have: watch this. How many people have died in Iraq since January 1st?...It is twenty-eight....I say it that way because we're gonna spend fifteen minutes talking about this. I've not seen one death, one name of a soldier, one person who allows us to do this, and you're in the military (referring to one of the fox reporters); we're the ones who defend this democracy. Those guys are over there dying, and we're gonna sit here and speculate about a young man who passed away, who's somebody's child, who's somebody's father, has not even been buried yet, and I think it's gone way too far...I think right now if we woke up this morning and instead of talking about Heath Ledger we talked about the troop who died last night by the IED...Nobody in this country knows who died yesterday. And if I know about Heath, I wanna know about the troop."

Now that is a man who GETS it, but yea, he was a Marine. I am not going to sit here like I don't buy into the celebrity junk, I read perezhilton.com for laughs but not for news. I don't buy gossip magazines or watch the TV shows, but I do like my bit of mindless entertainment. It was this mindless entertainment that brought me to Al Reynolds's MySpace page...He starts it off by saying "Dear Friends: If you think you are having a tough day, may I propose you walk in my shoes for a few hours." IS HE KIDDING ME??? This is a man who invited the WORLD into his life and now wants to be left alone. And to have audacity to act like his life is so hard? So I decided to write him back. Want to know what a it's like in my strappy sandals? (and yes I borrowed the story about the baby from a friend but I've seen it happen so many times that I couldn't leave it out)

I'm sorry that you think your life is so hard, trying being married to a man that you have to say good bye to over and over again never knowing when or if you'll see him.

Try being scared to death every time someone knocks on your front door not knowing if it is someone telling you you that he's not coming home.

Try spending hours by the phone and computer so to never miss one phone call or instant message because it's been months since you've seen him and you will take any piece of communication you can get.

Try struggling to make ends meet because the military requires you to move so often that you can't put your degree to good use but those student loan bills keep coming and your husband's pay has been messed up AGAIN!

Try avoiding the news because you don't want to even think about what it means.

Try having a child only for her father to leave days after her birth and by the time he comes home she's walking.

Try holding on to a friend who is pushing you away because only 11 short months ago she became a 20 year old widow.

Try any of these things and tell me again how hard it is to walk in your designer shoes.

-Proud Wife of a US Soldier...

I know that I shouldn't let what these people say get to me but honestly! How can they think the way they do and still sleep at night?

So it's Monday again

It's Monday again and here I am. Last week I started wearing DH's wedding ring on a chain around my neck. I am just so lonely it helps me remember why I am doing this and that it is so worth it. I miss him, I miss him so much. You forget how important it is to have a man in the house until he's gone. When the dog needs to go out at 3AM, when you buy something so heavy that I can't pick it up to bring it inside, when you are having a long day and you just want someone to come home to. But I am hanging in there. It's OK to be sad sometimes, as long as I realize that this is not forever and all of this waiting will be worth it when I see his face again.

So for updates on the past week, work has been crazy, as always we are busy saving the world. After work is pretty much the same everyday, get home and watch baseball, chat with my friends and wait for DH to come online. But that is about to change a little...I finally bought an elliptical machine for my apartment!! I have been saying that I want one for MONTHS and now I better start using it :) My goal has been to lose weight during this deployment but I can't tell you how much I HATE going to the gym. The people there, ugh, No dude I do not care about how much weight you can lift and I am looking in the mirror not at you. And lady, if you want to lose some of those lbs you will have to actually move on that machine and if you aren't going to get off so serious people can get on! Or the worst, get off you damn cell phone, I can hear you over my iPod! So now I can pop in a DVD and just do my thing while I am cooking dinner or waiting for DH to get online or anytime, I can work out for a bit stop and then get back to working out. Yes I am excited haha. No excuses now, I will drop this extra weight.

There is also a lot on the horizon...I am having my very first Spa day on Sat, I can't wait to be pampered...every woman should feel like a princess every now and then! And then in the week after that I am going to 2 baseball games because my hometown team is coming to town then a few days after that I have a friend coming to visit. And that will bring us into June! June is only 30 days but I am sure it will DRAG on for me because...well it just will ;)

So my goal this week is to log on at least 4 hours on the elliptical...I really hope that this time next week I can come back and say I exceeded that - I guess I just need to be held accountable, I need my husband to be shocked when he sees me!!

What a Week

So it seems that I update this about once a week, I am OK with this - a girl can only do so much talking about herself!

This has been a week of extremes. Early last week I was informed, as all the wives in the unit were, that the team had lost their first soldier. It was an indescribable feeling. I guess I should rewind to earlier that evening. I got home from work at the normal time and I was going though the regular routine, chat on IM, find something for dinner, wait for the phone to ring. Somewhere in the middle of all of this I heard the most horrifying noise that I have ever heard in my life...an unexpected knock on my door. I just stood there staring at it for a good 30 seconds but Moses would not allow me to ignore it so I went over. I tried to check it out with the peep hole but it was just too dark so I had no choice, I opened it. The poor kid who decided to sell whatever-it-was-that-he-had at my door must have thought I was crazy. My eyes were bugging out and there was no blood in my face. I simply told him no and I closed the door. Then I got to my couch and just LOST it, sobbing uncontrollably. A few little knocks that is all it would take to turn my world upside down.

I told my friend about this and as an army wife she understood, it is good to have other wives to talk to because as much as I love my civilian friends there are some feelings they will just never understand. After that I just needed to hear DH's voice, there was nothing else that would assure me that it was OK but that phone call never came. I waited and he never signed on IM but I soon learned why. I received an email alerting me that there had been a death. This I could not share with my friend, her husband is in a different unit and there are rules about information sharing so I sat on my couch feeling more alone than ever. What I am still having a hard time with is that at the same time that I was breathing a sigh of relief she was learning that her life was just turned upside down.

All of that made it just so real, this is real, this is war. I have a friend who lost her husband so it's not like I don't know that it happens but it's never been my husband in harms way. And then you think the most horrific thing but it's a perfectly natural thought, at least it wasn't mine. What is that really? Why should I get to see my husband again but she will not? DH wasn't calling, after a causality there is a time of black out so that the proper notifications can be made. I was up all night, I had a 8 hour panic attack, all night just crying and shaking. I called in sick to work the next day, I didn't really lie, I told my boss that I was dizzy and my entire body ached and that was the truth.

DH ended up calling the next day as I was having a crying fit, that was the last thing that I wanted. He knows that this is hard for me but I don't need him over there worried about me. I explained to him how I was feeling and he kind of understood but is has a way of detaching himself for a situation emotionally if necessary.

So that was the bad, the good is that a new life has made it safely into the world. My brother and his wife welcomed a daughter on Friday. This is their second child and I could no be happier for them! What will really make it a good night is if I hear from DH...it's been 3 days and that is just too long!