This Is Me

I live in a world that is not my own that I succumb to in many ways. I live by a code that leaves me to find joy in the small things in life. Not take advantage of anything. Love and learn from everyone I meet in my journey. And especially to learn what it means to be selfless in more ways I thought possible. I am a Army wife. It is what I do. I have a love hate relationship with what I do. But do I regret it? No way.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Just Call Me Dorothy

Oh man are all my Oklahoma people going to be shaking their heads at me....
I am ashamed.
Sigh.

SOOO, after we found out for sure we were getting John's pay as usual, plans continued for John to purchase his toy of this deployment--a motorcycle.
John and his battle buddy/personal friend, Tom Stoffel went on a quest to find John's new (used) bike.
The week prior a deal with a friend fell through so John was having to start over in the wants versus needs of what kind of bike he wanted.
To my dismay, I dug my own grave, by looking on craigslist.com and finding an ad for a motorcycle that looked like something he was looking for. I asked around about the specs of it and turns out it was a pretty good deal, so Tom and John made plans to go check it out.
Well, lloonngg story short, it was "the one."
Am I an awesome wifey or what?!
So on April 9th, John and Tom went to Stedman to get his bike.
Well, on the 8th, a co worker mentioned that the weather for the weekend was 100% chance of rain.
Ok, well that sucks for motorcycle weather, but ok.
While Tom and John were out getting on their motorcycle madness, the clouds came rolling in and brought in the most beautiful rain smell ever. The lightning started, the thunder rumbled, and eventually the power went out...but hey, we get rainstorms here all the time, so didn't think anything of it, it is what it is.
A couple hours later the guys drive up with the bike into the garage just as the clouds broke open and it was like God took a swimming pool of water and just dumped it on our house....
So we are sitting in the garage, with the door open, watching the rain, the guys drinking a beer playing on John's motorcycle.
Then the winds started to blow.
Like, really started to blow--to the point where we closed the garage and went inside and started a game of checkers while waiting for it to stop raining.
I get a text from my girl, Steph that a tornado dropped down by their apartment complex.
I read it...I understood it....but I didn't comprehend it...there IS a difference. 
Not to say I didn't believe her, but I read her text and was like, huh, well we are under a tornado warning, but if there was a tornado at her house then there would have been one at ours too, and there wasn't so....hmmm.....
Not even 15 minutes later the rain stopped and it was the most bright sunshine you'd ever seen came bursting through the windows. Kids ran outside to play, one with his kite, running down the road trying to collect on the final wind gusts breezing by.


We decided to take a few pictures of the motorcycle and John to commemorate the big day...notice the driveway still wet...sigh.




Sweet, the rain stopped, lets go get some dinner to celebrate the bike...even though he can't legally drive it yet, LOL.
So we hop in Tom's truck pull out of our subdivision and immediately notice all the power is out on the big streets...The traffic lights aren't even blinking.
Well that's weird!
We drive on to Panera Bread and it's empty, power is out.
We drive towards post, all the while I'm texting Steph, telling her maybe we shouldn't all go bowling tonight as we planned cause if Fayetteville is out of power, Bragg probably is too.


As I'm texting and we're driving we come up to one of the main gates to Bragg, called All American. It's backed up as far as the eye can see and to my complete surprise, people are turning around and driving down the median the opposite direction and going up the off-ramp of the exit behind us. 
What the heck...??
That's when I get a text from Stephanie saying, "Katie, I don't think you realize how bad this is."

Ok, we're obviously missing something.
I guess we aren't going bowling.
Let's just go home.
So we turn around and head home, well at this point all the main intersections are lined with Fayetteville Police squad cars directing traffic cause all the street lights are still out.
We come up on the intersection where we would turn to go to Steph's house, and they aren't letting anyone go down the road that direction.
Weird......
We get home and because we still have no power, I have no internet or tv to see what's going on, so Tom decides to brave the Bragg gates to get back to his barracks, while John and I run damage control on our poor animals who hate the thunder.

The power comes back on later that night, but our cable and internet are still down. I call our service provider where they have an automated message saying that due to the TORNADO service is down and they are trying as fast as they can to restore service.
Tornado...what tornado?? Oh, that one Steph texted me about??
It can't be, we only live about 2 miles away from them....how could there have been a tornado and we not see it....or rather, HEAR it.
Then our phones start blowing up from all the people we know all over town letting us know they are ok, and wanting to know if we are ok....
Ok from WHAT?!?!
Like, seriously? A tornado was over by us??
What is all this about, seriously.

The next morning John and I decide we need to go investigate this craziness. Well, we didn't get too far. We could only turn one way out of our neighborhood cause the police had it blocked off...well that's weird...fine, so we went the long way. All the street lights were still out....but power was back on here and there throughout town, so we went to the local Walgreens and I bought a newspaper to see what was going on...and here's the story I see on the front page...

http://www.fayobserver.com/articles/2011/04/16/1087211

Along with this article was a map of this tornado's path and my heart sunk....we were right in it and had no idea....we were standing in our garage, with the door open, watching the rain, messing around with John's new motorcycle with absolutely no idea that we were in any potential danger....
Here's the map, where the PINK STAR is where we live, RED STAR is where Steph lives...
I could technically plant little stars all over this map to show where a lot of friends live.
We are so naively blessed to not only just have rain ourselves, but that all our friends are ok too.
A couple of our friends had to tough it out the next couple days when it came to power, etc. Lots of patience tried and food wasted....TONS of damage everywhere.

There is still a lot of damage, and as I write this post, two weeks later, we are under another tornado warning....Apparently there aren't sirens here like in good ole OK to warn me of imminent danger, so lesson learned here, is not matter if you live in a state that calls a snow day for "potential of snow," take the thunderstorms and tornado warnings seriously.

Or close the garage door at least.



The Hard Way

I hate hearing, "Sometimes you gotta learn things the hard way."
Blah, what an adult comment to make, LOL.
Once our post deployment vacation to Florida was over John still had one week's worth left of leave still and while we would have preferred for him to enjoy having the time off, we were pegged with a dilemma none of us ever thought we'd face.
One of the main reasons a lot of people join the service is for job security and the benefits. The hours are long and the jobs are hard and so strenuous on everyone involved, but the financial and mental security that pay and benefits brings, makes it somewhat tolerable.

Here we are on his last week of leave, and all we can do is watch on the news about how he might get his pay frozen if the budget for our country is not fixed, etc. Well that's not the way it's supposed to work!
John and I are fortunate to have my income in the mix as well, which takes some pressure off. Thank God we hoarded most of this extra deployment money so we could pay cash for his truck, but also build up a nice nest  egg for those rainy days, those what if's, and those emergencies that may come along. Therefore we were not as worried as some, however, a lot of families in the military don't have that option.
Their service member's pay, IS their only pay.

I'm sorry but when my husband and the 108th boys JUST get home from their year long tour to Iraq and two weeks later you tell them they won't get paid till "things are figured out," there is something wrong with that picture. We would hear rumors and stories around post how, soldiers that JUST left on their tour, were having to tell their wives, in some cases this was their first deployment, that they might not get paid...how can you tell a stay at home mom with kids something like that?
How did we get to this point where not only livelihoods are threatened, but in all honest the integrity of our government system that is in such peril that it has to come to this?

I've always had this stigma, that even though we, as military families, are asked to sacrifice more than any civilian would ever understand, I don't want to be treated different than anyone else. I want to pay my dues and go through the same rules as someone else NOT in my shoes. In any aspect in life that may apply too. But here I was being challenged on that stigma thinking, wait a minute, after what I put up with in this lifestyle, um, what about me??

At first, John and I dismissed that this would even happen, I mean, how could something like that happen? Something will work out.
But then emails from command started trickling down telling everyone how everything was going to go down if an agreement wasn't met.
Wow, this is really real. Ok, so what do we do....??

Well the motorcycle plans he had, had to wait, that was number one, LOL.
We were prepared to spend the weekend in eating leftovers and finding creative things to do at home instead of our usual weekend plans of going out to eat and hanging out with friends, etc.

Fortunately for everyone, things were "fixed" (were they really anyway??) and we got our pay. Then I started seeing people leaving comments on Facebook, etc. how this "threat" of taking away military pay was just a political ploy and the government would never really let that happen....man that just got me fired up. That's so easy to say when you're not the one getting emails from your husband's boss's boss telling you what's going down. It's easy when it's not your personal livelihood at stake.
Then there was the whole attitude of, well if the military weren't deployed we'd save money, so bring them home and save a couple bucks.
Really? REALLY??
Yeah, uh, we get paid regardless of "where we are," first of all.
Secondly, as much as this effects my life every other year or so with deployments, I'd rather the fighting be over there, than here.
Just sayin.

One thing that stuck out to me the most in all of this pandemonium is how financially desperate some people in this country really are. Once things were solidified about our pay and everyone calmed down, another email was sent out from Command stating that this should be a wake up call for soldiers and families that just as you have to always be prepared for combat and the unknown, you also have to be prepared for all other unknowns such as this and not to be lax in your finances.
It broke my heart yet made me extremely irritated in how unprepared people were for a challenge like this.
You can't live without money, that's a fact.
And some people can't help but live paycheck to paycheck, I've been there.
But in my mind, there's really no excuse.

I know it probably sounds easy for me to say, since we have dual income and all, but you don't have to have dual income to have your game together.
This potential crisis solidified, for John and I, that our goals and our plans we've set in place with our finances were the right decisions for our financial future so that if and when an instance like this presents itself, we can take it in swing with everything else this lifestyle may bring and not have to live off ramen.

At our age, I'm proud of that, and it makes me even prouder that we set these goals, obtained them together, and that it worked. Not to toot my horn too much, but I'm totally patting myself on the back right now. :)

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Post Deployment Leave

One of the best things the Army does, in my opinion, is give pre and post deployment leaves.
This time is so precious for so many different reasons.
For families with kids it means hanging out with mom or dad for the last time in what will be a long time and on the other end of the spectrum it's a way to get reacquainted with the soldier once they have come.
This reintegration period is so imperative. Honestly whether you have kids or not.

When it's come to pre deployment leaves, John and I usually make an effort for John to see both of our fam's before he goes. Even on mid tour leaves, we tend to go to wherever our families are, for me it's a sense, of safety net. Being around people that truly know us and know our situation and what we are going through. However once boots are officially back on the ground and the green ramp dust has settled, we go on a selfish turn, and use post deployment leave for just us.
No one else invited.

Last deployment John was gone 15 months, as opposed to only 12 months this time. Each deployment, I have learned, as brought about different challenges. Part of these differences is of course where we are in our age and maturity, but the most uncommon denominator that you can never plan for is where you are in just life's experiences. What have you learned since the last deployment? What has changed? What hasn't changed? What will change? What has changed while he has gone??

Well one thing that we vowed to keep the same, is that post deployment leave would still be "ours."
No one else invited.
Last deployment we went on our belated "real" honeymoon by cruising to Cozumel and Calica, Mexico. We had good plans to try to cruise somewhere new this time around, but because of other underlying summer plans, it made sense for us not to cruise this time.
So what do we do instead? I sat here for months wracking my brain, trying to come up with something that will hopefully not make us regret not jumping onto that cruise ship destined to somewhere worry free.

I held a grudge against these other impending summer obligations, feeling like they were raining on my parade. John and I have to deal with so much as is, being in the Army and dealing with deployments, why do I have to continue to be selfless in my selfish time?! It was a very begrudging load to carry. John's much better at this than me. He gets over drama quickly, whereas I like to sit there and beat it to death. Another thing that hasn't changed with time or life's experiences, LOL.

Well, luckily for us, not a moment too soon, John's higher ups passed down a memo about a non profit organization called Warrior Vacations, which gets vacation home owners and hotels in Amelia Island, FL in particular, that have vacancies, volunteer their property or rooms up for soldiers and their families that have come home from a deployment.  John told me about this and I immediately had a wall up. Why would we need this? We have the money, we have the time, we can make our plan work and not have to take up a non profit offer to have a good vacation...plus, I tell myself, this should be for "real" families. Like, with kids! People that need not only the financial aspect of the vacation taken care of, but something that is kid friendly and family oriented.
But the more I sat there beating my head against the wall trying to figure out all our summer obligations, plus the fact that John may be home now, but he'd be gone again in three months, the more I became humbled in this organization's generosity and my pride decided to surrender to the proverbial beating it had succumbed too.

Fine, Florida it is.

The closer and closer it came to John's homecoming and the more little details I finalized for our trip, the more excited I found myself becoming. I kept telling myself, "Katie, it's about the one on one time, it's not about the where or how, but it's about the quality of experience."
By the time John actually got home, I was ready to skip green ramp all together and just jump in the car and go!

We left for Amelia Island on March 30th, our 3 year anniversary.

Awwww....I know.

Amelia Island/Fernandino Beach, FL is only 6 hours away from Fayetteville, NC so it was such a convenient drive. As luck would have it, it rained our whole drive down and the whole first afternoon we were there. I had scheduled us to have professional pictures taken the day we arrived, but since the power was out throughout half the island, we rescheduled and took a chance going out to the beach anyways one of the times the rain took a break.

I almost dare to say it was one of the best things we did for me..... running around the beach like a bunch of crazy teenagers in the rain just having a blast....this is what vacation is. It's not having a care in the world and being proud of it.

That night we dressed up a bit and went to one of the most talked about restaurants in town (well, the people we talked too!) called The Beech Street Grill in downtown Amelia Island. The had some of the best wine I have indulged in, in the LONGEST time. The night was awesome. The food was awesome. And still, not a care in the world and proud of it.
The next day it was still a bit overcast, but not raining, so John braved the cold water, wind, and jellyfish, and went for a swim while I watched on just enjoying the peace. Life seems so much more uncomplicated when you are facing the vast openness of water with no noise around you. I never wanted to leave....That night we went to this hoppin place called The Crab Trap and it was the best greasy seafood ever. Talk about diet killer, but it was worth it. After dinner we went to a bar right next to our hotel called Sandy Bottoms. Yes, it's intended how it sounds.
After talking to the bartender some, we told him we were here on vacation and that John had just finished deployment #2, etc. He replied with, "We all appreciate what you do to make sure we all still speak English in this country, the rest of your drinks are on me."
That was another highlight of the trip for me, LOL.
As convoluted that comment may seem to some, I thought it was awesome.
In Fayetteville, almost everyone is military, so everyone could careless how long you served, what you do, what you've sacrificed to do it....I was proud of him that he got some respect and credit, even if it was through free beer.

The next day the sun came out!!! We were so glad to finally be able to see this amazing place. Turns out the Amelia Island State Park and Fort Clinch was right across the street from our hotel, and thanks to Warrior Vacations, we got to drive through free, so we drove through the state park, with the moss and vines hanging over our car like we were in the Amazon.

We drove up to Fort Clinch and toured the fort. It was never officially finished because of wars ending, etc, so it was preserved as a historic landmark and turned into your typical tourism spot. Any type of tourism spot that has to do with war, however, is right up John's ally, so of course explored the entire thing. He was so in his element. He was fascinated by the barracks rooms, and their armory, and pretty much anything and everything he saw there. Needless to say you see more pictures with me in them than usual, because he was the one hogging the camera. It was so neat to see him so involved in something. I always get onto him about how he never takes a break from what he does. When we're home, he's always watching the Military Channel or something of the like, but hey, when it's your passion and your life, can't argue much with it.
On our way out we had an amazing moment of seeing a bald eagle perched on the wall of the fort. You can hardly tell with the picture I had to race to get, but it's there and it was a very cool moment. All the tourists that saw it just stopped talking and for a good minute or two, everyone was silent just watching this bird standing on the fort wall with the ocean behind it. It was amazing. As we were walking back to our car a armadillo came out of the bushes and chased me down the sidewalk, and John was oh-so-sweet enough to take a picture of it. Pretty much made my quota of run ins with nature in that one experience alone...

Later that afternoon, John totally lost some man points, and went horseback riding on the beach with me. He was a good sport. :)
My horse's name was Blaze and he was a little firecracker. John actually led our group with the owner of the ranch so we got some cool commentary on our ride. We got to ride on the state park beaches which meant no one else was out there bothering us, it was awesome. So quiet with nothing but us peeps and our horses. I totally loved it.
Later that afternoon we went and laid out on the beach....nature tried reintroducing itself to me by giving me a seagull friend that decided I was not all bad, and laid down next to me while I read. 

The next day we went and finally got our professional pictures taken. The photographer's name is Pam Bell and her husband is retired military. She works through the Warrior Vacations organization doing free photography and copyright for families here on their Warrior Vacation. We had an AMAZING time doing the photography on the beach and she made it so fun. John and I never got engagement pictures because of his first deployment, so it was really awesome to get to do this. At some points it seem like John was into more than me! 

Here's a teaser:



We went to dinner that night at this AMAZING restaurant called Brett's Waterway Cafe which is right on the pier downtown. We watched the most gorgeous sunset I've seen in a LLOONNGG time. 


John drug my butt out of bed early the next morning so we could also watch the sunrise. The night before it sounded like a great idea, but the actual morning of, not so much. It was cold and I fell asleep in the car waiting for the sun to peek up from the ocean. In all I am so glad he made me do it cause when it came up it was amazing and what was even cooler is we caught a video of a dolphin swimming by as the sun was coming up. 





After all was said and done, and we were headed home from our little hide away island, I silently decided this is my new favorite beach place. Myrtle Beach had always been our weekend runaway spot when we wanted a reason to get out of dodge, but now, I'm totally sold on Amelia. 

Life just continues to prove me wrong that it's all about the the quality, not the quantity.






Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Homecoming

Can't believe it's taken me this long to finally post about the 108th's Homecoming!
Needless to say, I have been busy.

News came down "through the line" that March 17th, Saint Patrick's Day, was going to be the day. Well, the night anyways....their ETA as of that morning was for later in the evening, around nine pm.....I debated going in to work that day, just to make time go by quicker, but decided I'd probably be a crazy grouch to deal with, so I didn't go.
I met with Steph, Luke, Jenn and two of her minions, Ben and Lexie at Panera Bread for breakfast to kick start the day.  I had never gotten to go to Panera breakfast with them, so this was a treat for me that they constantly have tried to talk me into.
After that I was off to the gym and then the mall to get a pedi and mani. Gotta have cute toes when your man comes home, you know, priorities!
Definitely carried all my "homecoming" clothes and stuff with me throughout the day though, just in case you get that crazy phone call that they came in early.....well, they didn't, the phone call I got was that they were now coming in at 11ish pm.
Ugh. This is going to be a LONG night.
To pass time, Jeanette met up with me when she got off work (at my work, LOL) and we went out for sushi. It was a great distraction. Sushi seems to solve most world problems, I'm convinced.
By then, it was time to meet up with Stephanie, Luke, Jenn and her kiddo's and head to green ramp. We had to get there early, waiting for one company ahead of us to do their homecoming, and then not only set up for ours, but also set up to sell our fundraising t-shirts for the FRG.

Without going into insane detail, the food got there, the shirts got there, the families got there, and after about 4 hours of waiting at green ramp, the guys marched into the hangar at about 11:40ish pm.
It was great. Homecomings are always such a slush of crazy emotions and no matter how excited I am or non stressed I am, I still get emotional. It's just such a happy time.
Dad's got see their kids, some for the only the second or third time since they've been born. Several of our friends were this way, it was almost more fun to watch their first reunion moments than have fun in our own.
After 10-20 minutes of reunion glory, the guys headed off to do all their in-processing for the night while we headed to the BTL Classrooms where there was food and a movie set up for the kids...what kids were awake anyways.
The guys finished around 2-2:30 am and we finally got to head home.

Our poor animals were so confused.
First of all, why is mom out this late at night....and second, who the heck is this guy?! Hurley of course will love on anyone that looks at him, so he was all for it, but Jax ran away with a puffy tail, and Bella, of course, couldn't be bothered either way.

John had to be in at work the next morning/afternoon for a half day, ugh.
But I had that day off too, so I puttered around the house making sure that our first weekend home wouldn't be laden with household chores.

Our first weekend with him home we drove up to Raleigh to not only buy him so new clothes, etc. but also to get his Chipotle addiction fixed for the time being. It was so fun and nice to walk around Crabtree and shop and not care about money, time, schedules, work, or any of that. It was just so great to literally do and buy whatever we wanted. Finally our hard work this deployment paid off and it was so great to enjoy it without a care in the world.

The next week we played musical cars, taking turns who took who to work and who got rides, etc. John was instantly on the prowl for his future truck that week and luckily with only in-processing taking half days, gave him a good amount of time to scour the town to find what he wanted.
Problem is he had a general idea of what he wanted, but me, being the pessimistic thing I am, didn't think he could find it. Not in Fayetteville anyways.
But he proved me wrong, and in these cases, I prefer to be proven wrong, so I was so happy when he found "his" truck.
What was even better is that we paid for it all in cash. This is what I was most excited about, but ya know, John's more concerned about his future motorcycle fitting into the bed of it.
Priorities.....

Without further delay, this is John's 2002 Ford Ranger XLT, I don't know anything about trucks and what's cool and neat with them, but I do know it has FWD and that in itself is a rare find here in NC. I've wanted to name it Lucy, but considering it's not a "manly" name, it probably won't happen....