// Type Writer Machine

As an addendum, I have been listening to this song. Read the previous entry for the prologue, and God Bless.

Some bright morning when this life is over
I’ll fly away
To that home on God’s celestial shore
I’ll fly away

I’ll fly away oh glory
I’ll fly away (in the morning)
When I die hallelujah by and by
I’ll fly away

When the shadows of this life have gone
I’ll fly away
Like a bird from these prison walls I’ll fly
I’ll fly away

Oh how glad and happy when we meet
I’ll fly away
No more cold iron shackles on my feet
I’ll fly away

Just a few more weary days and then
I’ll fly away
To a land where joys will never end
I’ll fly away

Do you know how when you are a mom, and you know that you love your kids, but there are those moments that make you REEL back and go…..OH MY GOD THANK YOU FOR MY KIDS! I LOVE THEM SO MUCH! (I use all-caps to do my best in expressing my joy within the internet.)

Do you know? If I have to explain more than what few words I have written, I assume you do not know and therefore do not have such joy in your life. I pity you. When your kid/s are lying there in the peace of God, which can manifest so strongly upon the young…..it transfers to your own soul, and you feel strength and compassion. Such love that makes your knees buckle while the young ones sleep is a rarity, and I mourn for every single woman who thinks that children would hinder rather than help them. Oh how much help have I received at the mercy of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Very little ,if any of it, has resulted in the birth of my son, Gabriel – yes, I say his name here freely, despite my justified (in my mind) paranoia about real names on the internet. And yet…..such a fulfillment do I feel. I hope and pray that the LORD chooses to bless me with more lives, even if they do not come from my own womb. JT and I have been praying about adopting. We have made some serious mistakes that have prevented us from having more of our own children. Mistakes that have brought tears to both of our eyes many times. However, we believe that our Lord is a God that posesses the POWER of HEALING through prayer and faith.

But anyway, if you choose to pray for us, do so. But my point in this blog entry was simply to proclaim the love that I have for my one son, and my desire for another, which will happen soon. I feel it and believe it. We are human, but GOD is GOD. Wow. I mean really. Wow. To us and to you…..just say WOW!!!

Yea, thou shalt lie down, and thy sleep shall be sweet.

Can we talk? I am really going through the fire this week, and I don’t know what I can say here and what I should leave out. I will just try to take it one step at a time.

I was supposed to go to Florida, and then make a trip to Canada. I will not say why here, or give many details, as they do not all concern me and I am not interested in using this blog to spread around other people’s private matters. The whole thing fell through yesterday, and it all hit me really hard. I have been trying to be very graceful about the whole situation, but I feel like I sort of got slapped in the face by a lot of it. Do you know how you can sometimes feel very powerless when there is a situation in which you would like to help, but your means do not allow you to help enough to resolve everything? It feels like there are all of these loose ends that I can not gather up to tie. I can’t even tuck them away at all, and it makes me feel really unnecessary. I have good reason for not going the distance. I have responsibilities at home that I have to take care of. I have a responsibility to my husband and my son, and also to myself. I have a lot of inner….well…problems that I have been trying to attend to in myself, so that I can rise to any occasion and be the woman whom God wants me to be. It’s hard to explain without giving away many details. I am not trying to be cryptic or vague. Clarity just escapes me sometimes.

I struggle with having enough energy during the day to get everything done. I struggle with remembering to do what I need to do for my health. I have medicine that I always forget to take, and yet I know that I would feel so much better if I would take it every day. I have bad habits that I would like to break, but letting go of those things, though desirable, are incredibly difficult. It feels impossible sometimes to let go of anything, because I feel like it’s the thing that anchors me down in a way. I know this is foolish thinking, too, because God is my anchor. He is the one whom I need to be clinging, and these other things are keeping me from doing that completely. I don’t think I will ever be the person that God wants me to be if I can’t let go of the past. I know that I need Him to heal me and to lift me up, though, so I am trying my best to wait and to trust. So far it has taken years. It might take more years after this, I don’t know. I do know that I am not going to turn away again, no matter what happens to me. God is the only rock on which I choose to stand. Nothing else is stable.

I want to help the people who are around me, but I can’t seem to be able to help myself.

My dad told me that he isn’t going to be using his WordPress site much anymore, and that makes me pretty sad. I was hoping that setting it up for him would be a way for him to let his creative juices flow more. I guess that creativity may not have ever been an issue for him. We have talked in the past of writing children’s books together, where he would write and I would draw the pictures, but I am not much of a creative person myself anymore, so that never happened. I don’t want him to stop writing, but I don’t know that I can do much to convince him that he shouldn’t let the influences of men stop his gift. If it’s a deeper issue than just that, then I don’t know about it.

I have often struggled with my writing, and whether I should keep this site up, and whether I should just let my literary talents (if you could call it a talent – I really don’t, normally) fade and die. I have decided to keep trying at it, because perseverance is important, especially during a dry spell. I might not write every day, but I will try for once a week to start, and see where that takes me. I think it is important for me to keep this thing up, so even if I just post a picture or something, that should keep it going well enough.

I know I will be fine. I just need to dig my way out of this funk, and try to make something happen that will give me a good feeling about what I do here all day. Cleaning and gardening haven’t been enough, and I think there is something more that I could be doing. I will be alright.

The Army has screwed up our paychecks. His LES still says E5 instead of O1E, so every two weeks, we miss out on about $700 that we could definitely be using. We are taking it in stride, though. We still have enough for what we need and all. We just need to continue to be lean in our purchases, and try not to go overboard with things. We should have a really nice chunk of back pay when all of this is fixed. ($700 a paycheck for about two and a half paychecks, plus the $600 one-time clothing allowance, plus the partial clothing allowance for six months of enlisted time, which should be about $300. Oh yes, darlings. A nice big chunk of change. Unfortuantely all of it is going to pay off the credit card which I had to run up again because we haven’t had enough money. Crap!) It will be nice to be able to unwind a little with the budget, though I still intend on saving most of it. We don’t want to change our standard of living much. Instead, we are hoping to pay off our big loan and take care of business so that we can start to do more things toward retirement, investment, and savings. We have a $25,000 loan we are going to start paying on in September, but the interest rate is super low (2.9%) and we used it to consolidate almost all of our debt so that’s good. I am planning on paying as much extra as possible on the principle so that it can be paid down more quickly. I was paying on it, but then our pay got messed up all weird, so I had to stop. I found out that our TSP (Thrift Savings Plan – basically the Army’s version of a 401K) has over $5,000 in it mere months after dropping down to below $2,000 with the stock market crashing and all. Looks like things are on the up-and-up there. Though we have a long way to go before we are millionaires, I am hoping that after we get this loan taken care of, we can head toward that goal a little more quickly.

Sorry for all of the money talk. I just have a lot on my mind, and I guess that I don’t really care what I put in here today. I’ve got to go, though. I’ve got a pizza in the oven for lunch (easy peasy), and I have a lot of cleaning to do unfortunately. I don’t know how I feel about cleaning today, but alas, it must be done. ‘Ere I go, trudging once more through the mire of daily life. Hopefully something really excellent will happen to me this weekend so that I can get my mind off of the things that have been bothering me.

Today I got up a bit early (15 after 8, it’s early for me) so that I can get ready to go to a coffee social at the BC’s house. I was invited some weeks ago, and fortunately I remembered about it last night, or else I might not have made it. I leave in about half an hour, and the only reason I am sitting here typing and not getting ready is I am waiting for pants to dry. Hurry up pants, dry! I suppose it will be alright. I don’t intend to stay long. I don’t go for these socials much. I am only going to be polite to the BC’s wife, and after this I might not attend anything else except for the BOLC II graduation, if that. BOLC II is a joke. So far, they haven’t taught JT a thing, and they have kept him away from home way more often than what I would have preferred. He’s gone all week this week, out in the field, training in a “mock downrange environment.” How ridiculous. He’s already been deployed twice, he knows what it’s like downrange. What they need to do is pat his backside, send him home, and let him train up every day for IOBC and Ranger school.

But anyway…I guess there’s not much can be done about it. This is week 3 of 7, so it’s nearly halfway over.

….Later….

I had to rush around earlier getting our clothes set out and then had to leave fairly quickly so I wouldn’t be late. It was alright. At the BC’s house. His wife is nice. I am getting a thank you card ready for her. All of the information was things I already knew about for the most part, but it was nice to meet some of the other wives. I was only one of four that showed up out of the 22 that were invited. Mrs. B said that only ten RSVPed out of that. I thought that was rather shocking. I mean, I can understand saying you can’t come, but 12 out of 22 women didn’t respond at all, and to me it feels like a real social faux pas. If you are invited to something and you aren’t going to go, you should at least have the common courtesy to send a quick note to say that you can’t make it. Maybe I am old fashioned, but that’s just the way that I feel a person should behave generally.

Her house was beautiful. I know her husband is an LTC and by that very reason they are entitled to a nicer place, but her decorations were beautiful, and I just feel like I am never going to have a house like that. Sometimes I don’t even know where to start. I am so used to just living with what I need, no more. I feel like this place is always in a state of chaos, and I wish that I could just get it to a place where it took little effort to keep it up. But I feel like I am constantly at it, trying to combat piles of mess. Blaaah I don’t know. I love my house, I just wish that I was better at decorating. I am just no good at buying all of that kitschy shelf crap that you see in houses that don’t seem to serve much purpose, but that add a lot to the look of a place. You know what I am talking about? Yeah I always see those things in the store but know that I won’t have anywhere to put it, and feel like it would be a waste of money to buy it. Maybe I will figure it out some day.

Anyway, I am rambling, and I have laundry waiting for me. And possibly a nap. Summertime makes me sleepy.

Aaah, the glorious days of summer in our back yard! I would write something, but this picture seems to convey everything that we have been doing well enough.

I really love sushi. That being said, I don’t love it that much. It’s tasty, but some of it is nasty. I don’t understand the current trend that has made sushi so popular that it is downright boring now. That’s right, I said it. Sushi is boring. DOWNRIGHT boring. Do people feel more posh when they eat sushi? It’s like Starbucks. Somehow, people seem to think that they are trend gods just because they go to Starbucks, like it’s the best kind of coffee in the world or something. Sugary crap is what it is, and overpriced, too.

Just pondering the imponderables.

Really having a rough time this evening, but I am trying not to focus on that.

Earlier was nice. I should be nicely sun-kissed, but thanks to some amazing sunscreen, I am not burned. I just have that tired feeling one gets when they have been out in the sun for long periods of time in the south. You know that tired feeling? That’s me right now. I have been outside with my little man in the garden. Lots of weeding today, and some spraying of a homemade pesticide that is in its experimental phase. We also planted some beautiful tomato and jalapeno plants, and I can’t wait to see what comes of those. I still have so much work to do out there, and pictures will be coming shortly. It’s really nice to get outside in the earth. I feel like She-Ra in my little blue weeding gloves. Icky bugs? No problem, for I have GLOVES on! HAHA!

I have decided that the garden is where I belong. I don’t know if I will be successful in all of my plantings, but making it beautiful is a nice goal, and it is really fun to come inside from a hard afternoon of sweaty toil, covered in dirt, take a hot shower, and feel truly accomplished. It’s fun to see my progress over the weeks, and to see new buds come up. It’s even fun to plant seeds and watch them fail – fried in the hot sun from under watering. Well…not fun…but fun to learn lessons from my failures, because they are cheap failures, and seed packets are, almost literally, a dime a dozen.

Eh. I don’t know. It’s just nice. It was the highlight of my day. Now I am tired, and ready for a rousing game of Bejeweled on my Xbox 360. If only my husband would go to bed so I can get that party started. (He’s tearing it up on Civilization Revolution. Apparently he just conquered San Fransisco, which is now, according to him, a “no fag zone.” By this, I am amused.)

There is a lot going on here, but I will not sully the evening with such topics. Maybe another time, after word has spread. No doubt it will. It’s unfortunate how people gossip and yet never try to help. I feel so powerless sometimes. I just use these moments to try and remember how to pray some action into others. Too bad I am not a very good Christian. (Not as good as I would like to be, anyway.)

My goodness. I am cleaning a few things up on this website and I saw that I had 11 unfinished drafts. I can rarely finish them, so I don’t know why I save them up.

This weekend was incredibly lazy, but I got a lot of much-needed rest and time with JT. He has been gone so much since he started OCS that having a four-day weekend with him was really great and also really strange. Don’t get me wrong, I love to be with him, and I miss him very much when he is gone, but I think that only other Army wives will understand what I mean when I say that when he is home for longer periods than usual, it feels weird and takes a lot of getting used to. I realize that sounds kind of bad, but it’s not bad. It’s just life when you’ve got the Army telling you what’s up all the time.

Graduation is next week, and I will be the wife of a brand new butter bar. How sweet. I think life is going to be very strange for him at first, especially since he has been in the service for over ten years, and is only just now getting around to being commissioned. Not all soldiers go that route, and the ones who do are usually never enlisted first, so the rank of 2LT does not have a lot of respect among the enlisted and NCO corps. I know because of how much time I spent making fun of butter bars myself. It’s all in good fun, of course, but now the shoe is on the other foot so to speak. I think it will be interesting to see what happens in the coming months. I am really nervous about a lot of it. We’re going to have a lot of family come into town, and I love having family and such, but I just know that it is going to be really busy, and graduation day is going to be a very emotional day for me, and I just hope that everyone will understand if I act erratic in any kind of way. It’s my style to have a cardiac arrhythmia every time some major change happens to us, which seems to be taking on a pattern of happening about four times a year at least.

I have to be honest here. I am really struggling to hold it all together this week. I’ve got a lot going on, and it is really difficult to make enough time to complete everything.

I have been sewing up the straps on my evening gown for the military ball, and I don’t really like it, but it’s not the worst sewing job I have ever done. I am trying to make it as neat as possible, but the way that the straps have already been sewn on as well as my mediocre-at-best level of sewing skills are keeping it from being entirely invisible. Only people who look for it will be able to find it, I think, and I am not going to announce it to the world or anything. Still, though, I am frustrated. Maybe I could pin something on the straps to hide it better? I wish the dang thing fit me perfectly, and I didn’t have to alter it in any way. The waist could be let out about half an inch and it would be more comfortable, but I have decided that instead of taking it to the tailor, I am going to suck my stomach in as best as I can. Oh yeah, and I am not going to eat anything from now until the formal so that maybe I will lose half an inch instead. I really need to lose half an inch on my waist. I guess I should hit the trampoline double-hard this week as well.

It could be worse, though, and I don’t think I am going to look that bad. I just really need to let go of some of this obsessive vanity that grips me. I think vanity comes in many different forms. Obsessing over a small piece of what is actually a very nice dress in general is one of those forms. I will just make sure to do the very best that I can, and not let what I can’t do get in the way of my having a wonderful night.

Another thing that I have been trying to do is work in my flower garden, but I haven’t had any time at all. Now my sunflowers are dead, and I am afraid the zinnias are headed that way as well. They were just seedlings, and I still have the poppies, the columbine, and the echinacea to look after, but just the same…it is a disappointment. Maybe I can replant. I need to get some new brick or stone trim for the flower bed, as I had to pull up the old trim. It was old wood, rotting and falling apart, covered in slime and algea. It was really awful, actually. Splinters sticking up everywhere, held down in the ground with old rusty nails. I also have to finish pulling up the big roots from the bushes that I dug up. There were some old ugly ones. I didn’t like them, so I got rid of them. I had to chop some off at the roots though, intending to go back and dig the roots out when I had time. That time has not yet come. Part of it all is that it has been basically raining non-stop for a week, and on the day after it rains, I really hate working outside because it’s so muggy and there are slugs everywhere. I have been waiting for a good dry hot day to go out and get some more dirt under my fingernails (so to speak; I wear gloves), but so far I have not been granted that privilege. Maybe tomorrow is the day, as it has not rained all day today (so far).

It is very difficult for me to come on here these days and talk about what’s been going through my head. Sometimes I wonder if I will keep this website going or if I should just stop writing altogether. I feel like I don’t post enough pictures, and I feel like my days are the same thing over and over again, without much to talk about. I try, but a lot of the time it feels really forced. I am sure I will keep this site around, though, because I am convinced that this is just a season, and soon I will be writing again and doing more and feeling good about my days. This is not saying that I don’t feel good about my days, though. I just feel backed up, like there is way more for me to get done even in a week. I would like for everything to be caught up for once. I would really like to be able to tackle a lot of the projects that have been sitting on my to-do list for a couple of months now. I feel very restless about that…like it is really important for me to figure out a way to tackle it all, because bigger things lie ahead. How do you do it, though? How do you find the time to take care of these things that must be done, when there are so many other priorities that are pressing in from all sides?

I don’t know. I am working on all of this. Trying to stay in the Word, even though it seems like I am “too busy” to sit down. I am trying to force myself, because I know that it is important. I have to admit that it is so easy for me to stop reading and studying for weeks at a time, sometimes longer. Oh yes. It is not something I am particularly proud of, but it happens so easily. If I forget to read for even one day, I am done for it seems. So I have been trying to read more often and more vigorously lately so that I won’t lose track of what I really need to be focusing on.

Another thing I am trying to do every day, which is completely superficial compared to studying the Bible, is drinking a cup of hot green tea every day. I have heard a lot about the positive health benefits that can come from drinking green tea regularly, so I am trying it out for myself to see if it makes any kind of a difference. Maybe I will feel better. Maybe I will have more energy. Maybe I will lose a little weight. Who knows. Anyway, it tastes good, and I feel relaxed when I drink a cup of tea, so if that’s all it does, then it’s worth it.

Yeah, I definitely need to relax. It seems that this weekend went by too fast, and I don’t feel as rested as I know I should after four days of doing absolutely nothing.

I can’t seem to be able to write much these days.

Life just seems too full. I can’t put words to it. I have been trying. I start a new post just about every day, but then I stop, because I just can’t seem to describe the events that have been going through my head.

I am happy, though, rest assured. If happiness is what is keeping me from writing, then I am okay with it. I will just keep trying until the words start to flow again.

I am making a little bit of progress with my day so far. Mondays are usually slow for me. It’s all about getting back into the swing of things. Weekends really throw me off, especially since it’s the only time I get to see JT. He was here this weekend for a brief time. He got to stay over night, but he didn’t get home until after 19:00, and he had to leave before 14:00 the next day. It was a bit upsetting, but I was (and am) really glad that we got any family time at all. Yesterday was great. Before we left, the whole family snuggled up on the couch and we watched March of the Penguins together. JT had never seen it before. I wonder if he liked it. I mean it’s kind of a cutsie film, but I think it was really well done, especially for a documentary about penguins. You’d think that would be boring, but it is an adorable film. I got sick of it at one point, because it was all G wanted to watch, but we haven’t watched it in a few months, so I am starting to appreciate it again.

G has that effect on movies for me. Especially the ones he wants to watch ad nauseum.

The weather is absolutely amazing today. What happened, weather? Did you decide to be kind for once? I mean, seriously. It’s 66 degrees in May in south Georgia. Beautiful! So breezy and sunny. It is a welcome feature after many days of rain and heat. I wish that I was out in it, but I am not. Instead, I am inside, working on chores and tasks that have to be completed by week’s end. I do have the windows open, though, and am giving the a/c a rest. I do have a few out-of-the-house errands that I would like to accomplish, but I am really quite unprepared to leave the house. I need a shower, and G and I are working on school for the day, and I still need to finish my grocery list. I am trying to be a little more meticulous with a list this week, because we have had a few expenses come up recently, and I don’t want to spend as much as I usually do at the Commissary. Fortunately, the pantry is still quite full, and I don’t need a lot as it is. Mostly just milk and produce. The perishable things. And snacks for G – those go really quickly around here as it seems he is constantly snacking.

Anyway, I really am enjoying my day. Today is my 7th year wedding anniversary. I wish JT was here to spend it with me, but despite that, it’s a good day. He’s already sent me flowers like a good boy. I got beautiful purple orchids in the mail the other day. They are to die for. Soon as I get around to it I will post a picture. Even though he isn’t here, I am not worried, because from what I hear, he is going to have a four-day weekend this weekend for Memorial day. That. is. going. to. be. so. awesome. I haven’t spent more than two days in a row with him since March, so I am really excited, and so is the little man. The only plans that we have made are to go to a friend’s house to watch UFC on Saturday night, and in the morning on Saturday I have an appointment to get my hair did for the military ball, which is only…two weeks and one day away! And before that, we have the BC social to attend, which is on the evening of May 29th. My friend Chrissy is going to watch G for us while we go, because it’s not kid friendly, so I am really really excited about that. Do you know how long it has been since we got to go out without our son? I think it’s been more than two years now.

So there are some really exciting things coming up!

But until then, I have all of these chores staring in my face. I can’t wait for this weekend already, and Monday is only half over. My weekend should start on Thursday night, though, so that’s a good thing.