4/30/08

And so......I feel like I'm on an episode of HGTV House Hunters

We narrowed it down to three houses......two that were functionally correct for our family, right size, right number of bedrooms, etc......and one that I fell in love with but it was one bedroom short but you know sometimes you just have to sacrifice for perfect......

And so after many more homes we looked at, we made an offer on one of the functionally correct homes.....we made the offer almost 10 percent lower then the asking price and where we are there are things they are bound by law to have to pay due to our opting to use our VA again. I was not aware that if you put more then 10% down your VA funding fee drops significantly.....and if you are retired and have over a 30% disability you don't have to pay it at all.....just some FYI.

So our realtor took the contract over a little while ago....the couple is military and they are doing the same thing we are, out of town at their gaining installation looking for a new home, so it's being done via phone.....and that kind of worries me a tad bit, but I hope they atleast will counter and we can come up with a negotiated compromise. I really love the house and hope that this works out, otherwise we start over with the next house, which is my least favorite and I'm not so sure he'd consider our offer.....and the one that is not made for a family with three kids....well, I may love it, but my older daughter may hate me before it's over.....

So keeping my fingers crossed because I am beat. I have looked at so many homes, my exercise limit has been exceeded but I am holding up well.....so well I think I am going to see about driving my car instead of shipping it.....I think I can do it.....it think I can.

4/25/08

Packing ...... do I have any volunteers?

I loathe packing. For years I packed for everyone in my household no matter where we went and no matter how long we'd be gone. The worst packing job I had to do was for my children and myself to go stay at my mother in law's for a couple months while my husband took a course TDY in route to Europe in which we DID not have concurrent travel.....which meant we signed out of housing and he came and spent Thanksgiving with us, went to his class, which lasted for a month, came back and spent Christmas with us and flew out right after New Years to Germany......

So I had packed for all four of us for about 4 months, as it would turn out we would meet him in Germany 3 weeks later, but I had packed the things you can't let the movers pack and kept them with me, so by the time I boarded our first of two flights to get to Frankfurt, I had eight checked bags, 4 carry-ons, a car seat, an 11yr old, a 9 yr old, a 3 yr old and a cat. I thought I was in hell and we almost missed our connecting flight.......I never wanted to pack or fly again!!!!

And so I began to pack tonight for our trip......I didn't get very far.......but I did manage to pack my makeup and the stuff to do my hair......and that IS an accomplishment.....I have leftover 80's hair.....not in that it's MALL hair, but I do tease it, and I have my ONE special comb I have to use....and I use only one special hairspray and one special brush......if I were to forget these things, my husband would be one very unhappy man while we are traveling. I highlighted my hair today and now I need to get the empty containers that are travel sized for my shampoo and conditioner so my hair does not make me look like I'm a close relative of Phyllis Diller.

My husband brought up the packing thing tonight......I asked him if he was packing for himself, he said he was, he was packing two uniforms and 5 pair of underwear....... that is my official signal from him that if I don't want him looking the way my 9 year old does when he dresses himself, I'd better get his civilian clothing out and packed......why is it that my husband was handsomely dressed up until his 29th birthday at which time he and I married and since then, if I don't dress him, he consistently walks around in jeans, often torn, a Harley Davidson T-Shirt, boots and a cowboy hat? I mean I get the whole, you have the bike you wear the attire, you look the part, but sheesh, it's not like I have not bought you a ton of clothing that does not read H.D. from every town we have ever lived in.......although he does look rather sexy, sometimes I do like him to sport a pair of khakis, a nice polo and his docksiders.......is that too much to ask? Not if I'm the one packing it I guess.

Anywho.......I have to pack for a week. For me that requires a lot of clothes, I mean I never know what kind of mood I am going to be in when I get up, so how come I have to be penalized on what I wear because my choices either don't fit in one bag or it's too heavy, that is just totally unfair to me! Not to mention the weather is ENTIRELY different there and who knows what it will be like....I mean the weather says one thing here and hey you go outside and guess what? It is nothing like what the weather is reading, so how am I supposed to trust weather.com? So in the great big world of everything, is it really that big of a deal if I pack two bags? Come to think of it for some reason I think they changed the weight allowance since I last flew too......that was when I came home from Europe 4 years ago.....I should probably check that, it used to be 70 pounds, but for some reason I think it's 50 now..... that in and of itself is a good reason to pack 2 :D

Ugh......I dread flying (which I hate), packing, GOING......I just don't think the week will be very real estate productive, although.......I did find a beautiful home (had only a picture of the outside of it) for us to look at, but then we run the chance of someone putting in a contract before we arrive to look at it.........UGH, did I mention I hate moving, I hate being forced to have to live off post because they have NOT built the housing yet to offset what they lost when their contract was up!!!!! GRRRRRRR!

4/24/08

My Mother's Birthday and Great Customer Service

So...my mother's birthday, her 69th birthday is at the end of the month and I um.....sort of let the month get away from me on the whole gift thing......I thought okay I'll send flowers, eh, no......did that last year and besides I have to send them to her next month on mother's day because what kind of horrible daughter would I be if I forgot her on mother's day.....

My mom and I have what I refer to as the "rocky road ice cream" relationship. We love one another with all our hearts, but it's been in the rocky road direction and often we can end up in a melt down...... You know how you know people who have a relationship with their mother and/or father that is like something out of a fairy tale, or maybe not that great but something that you have looked at during your life and kind of envied? I have a friend like that, her name is Lisa.....she has these parents who have made being a kid an easy thing, being a teen, not just an easy thing, but they were by her side when she needed them without the lecture coming out of their mouth first thing.....and now, her parents are still married after 48 years and to this day I know she and her parents are extremely close.....but that has and never will be the kind of relationship I have with my mother......

She is a great grandparent and loves her grandchildren, but with us not living close, it makes the closeness hard......I often wonder if in the back of my mind, did I move away at 20, get married, join the military all just to get away because I thought it would be easier then hanging around? And so for 20 years we have done the ups and downs of continuing our rocky road relationship with her visiting me and I visiting her.

She lives with my sister, their relationship is obviously different then mine. I'm okay with it being that way, I mean I have been away for 20 years and she has lived with her for 17 years, so of course they are going to be closer then my mother would be with me.......am I envious.....funny, I'm not.

So......back to the birthday present......I searched on the internet yesterday for the perfect gift basket to send to my mother. It has to be just right or I would worry about my mother not being happy with it (my issue not her's). I looked on my favorite site (although I have not ordered from them, I been sent a gift basket from them in the past) which is Harry and David, I had picked out what I wanted to send her and I even qualified for a free gift that I included with the basket, and then I went to check out and I even knew it would be late so I did not bother to rush the delivery, I just left it as standard, I knew I had waited and my mother would be okay with it coming a couple days late since the no later then date was like the 2nd of May and her birthday is in April, but when I got to the final page where you check out, I was stunned to see that their service charge, standard delivery was over 30.00.....I was like okay, yeah time to find another gift, that is 1/3 the cost of what I had paid for her gift.....outrageous...then they charged me a fuel fee...... forget that!

So on to something else.....I went back to my search page and found this great site called adorablegiftbaskets.com and found something comparable and it cost less and the shipping was less then 9.00 and I found a coupon online that saved me money off my purchase as well....but the great customer service came in today.....yesterday my computer battery died and computer went into hibernation while I was finalizing the transaction so when I plugged it back in I had to refresh the page, which then put my billing address in the shipping place and I never caught it.....the phone number I caught and changed it to my mother's but the address, I just never saw.....so today they called me and asked me if my mother lived with me and I was like, um.....no......why and they told me that I had the package being shipped to my house......and they saw the state phone number and wanted to check if it was just a cell number, which it could very well have been.....I was so relieved that they called, what would I have done if that had come here and not to my mother? I would have felt horrible......not to mention how would I explain to my mother what a moron I am because I can't enter her address without messing it up?? How many companies catch things like that? How many companies really care?

4/23/08

You know the Army spends entirely too much money!

Okay so here's the deal......My husband has to go TDY to visit the guy he's replacing...no big deal....I am going with him so that we can look at houses....it's not like he's going to be busy all day and well I can go and look on my own with a realtor, I don't think I'm too worried about the one we chose doing me bodily harm.....I mean I could beat him with my cane if need be.....

Okay so back to the Army and money. We all know that contractors are paid an enormous amount of money for the things they do......and I know how much they pay for the special ordered filters to fit my 24x24 opening for my hvac on my house and it's just a ridiculous amount of money......but today just floored me.

My husband called and says "I have good news and bad." He and my oldest daughter are in competition for the PROCRASTINATION AWARD around here.....they both wait until nearly the last minute for everything, even with me hounding them daily......so after procrastinating for two weeks, ever since he found out he had to go on this trip and I was going with him, he finally decides to go and book our airline tickets today through transportation. Also known as Carlson Wagonlit where he tells me his ticket is $1004.00 (this is where I'd insert the shock smiley if I had one) then he tells me the other part, my ticket is going to be $1360.00 if I fly with him on this reservation.....now hold the hell on there smokey, we have a problem, they are supposed to save you money, not rip you off.....isn't that the point of having a GOVERNMENT TRAVEL AGENCY....???? I told him do not use that ticket, cancel the reservation completely that I would book our travel and they can then reimburse you. I whipped up Expedia and in 5 minutes had us both booked on flights for less then the price of the ticket they had me booked on, now the only catch is I have us leaving a larger airport that is about 40 minutes further then the one they had us leaving from, but still, come on.......$2304.00 for plane tickets......yeah, NO.

Oh and I asked my husband what the the good news had been after I called him back and told him what I got the tickets for and he said, "oh, well that was that even if I had to pay $1360.00 for you to go with me, I still wanted you to go"...... I was like not at that price your aren't Mr. Good News comedy guy...... even your ticket was outrageous, Government spending our tax dollars entirely too freely I see!

So it makes me wonder why does the government do things they way they do? They say report waste and abuse.....UM .....I sort of think the way our whole Military operates is waste and abuse...... here we are spending 1004.00 to send a soldier to his gaining installation to meet the guy he's replacing when they could do it for 1/2 that by just using EXPEDIA.com but nope, they have to use the GOVERNMENT CONTRACT.....oh please....everyone should start doing these TDY's the smart way, book everything yourself, then maybe the Government would stop using these overinflated contracts.... oh but that is too easy......and cost effective.....yeah cost effective my ass.

4/17/08

I guess I could be more productive

I don't get up much....I'm either in the living room or laying on my bed. Since the nerves in my foot get agitated when I walk. I could be reading the 15 or so books I have on my list. Right now the current selection is Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, its funny, enlightening and interesting, but it's not as interesting as my guilty pleasure.

Thats right I am an addict....no it's not alcohol, but then who could blame me there, it's not even this computer, which I barely turned on yesterday, except to look at real estate, which totally bummed me out, nope my addiction is to HGTV. I slap anyone who touches my remote control. My husband says I am out of control......but I'm not.......

Here is why I have become an addict of HGTV. Where we are moving to, the real estate is not overly expensive, but the real estate taxes are enormous.....and so I fear we may have to buy a house that needs renovation. I have renovated rooms in our houses before, but one property we are interested in will need the entire kitchen and probably both bathrooms done......and so I am an addict of HGTV, because I know these things can be done without costing enormous amounts of money but you have to know how to do it, and so I have been soaking up this information like a sponge........

SO I, A Soldier's wife am an HGTV addict......oh the shame.

yeah, I have nothing better to write about so there you have it.......

4/15/08

Welp, what do you say about that?

So while I was at the doctor's being told how lucky I was to be alive, my 15 year old who has (or I should say HAD) the most beautiful long hair in the world was getting a hair cut at the PX. I was quite proud of her actually.

See she is the quiet one, her older sister is like a one teen tornado, she walks in the room and sucks the air out of it. She is outgoing, in the honors program, she was in the band, but SHE WAS NO BAND GEEK, she has huge blue eyes, that look to her that has all the guys chasing her and she just laughs them off, she doesn't want a boyfriend because as soon as she captures their interest, her interest fades FAST like icicle in the oven FAST.........so back to my younger daughter, she has very striking features, very brilliant green eyes, she is not meek but she does stand in her sister's shadow.........what younger sister doesn't, I did, until I grew into myself........

Anyway, so she called and made the appointment, she did ask her sister to walk with her over there (we live really close to it) Now I saw the photo of what she wanted, but you know, I figured she would bale in the end and just have her hair layered like she usually did......

NOPE, her hair is gone......not gone like 3 inches long gone, but up to her shoulders then razor layered gone........I sat there and watched 10 years of her life fly by me and I almost cried, but if I cried then I knew she would, so I held it together........and so instead I told her a story of when I was in 8th grade I cut my hair off and got a perm and tried to style it myself and I looked like I belonged, well I had an afro, she understood this concept, I'm not sure if she would have understood Soul Train. We laughed as I told her I had to ask my sister for some help as she told me I needed to use a round brush and a curling iron......a curling WHAT? Yeah I'd never used one of those, but a few burned fingers and marks on my neck and head later I had it down.....crisis overted.

Then my daughter says, are you going to highlighted tonight, Um.....yeah, I did say I'd do that huh? So I had highlight my older daughter's hair many times using the pull through the cap proceedure (I sound so surgeon like) But my younger daughter's hair is darker then her sister's, whose hair only takes like 8 minutes to process, but my younger daughter's hair took 35 minutes, I was kind of worried, but as we rinsed, then washed and conditioned that worry lifted and she wrapped her hair (what was left of it :( ) and ran off to blow dry it to see the results.

The Results..........yeah that was when she came back out and we all sat there with absolutely nothing to say.......because the other 5 years that were left of her life, that was when they flashed by me without a sound, it was like a quiet passing of my daughter's last years of childhood into becoming a young woman with likes and dislikes and choices of what she wanted.......see I fought her cutting her hair for the last year, I kept telling her she would regret it, but I think it was about me holding on to my little girl, the last time she had short hair, she was 3, now she has the will and want to change her look, I had to go hug her and tell her how great she looked, she was so beautiful and then I excused myself with some lame excuse because I had to go cry.......she was no longer a child......

4/14/08

I guess with all things considered

I was lucky. I'm alive.....

Pretty ominous post, huh?

I met with my internal medicine doctor today. After I had somehow gotten the appointment all messed up, my appointment had been at 10:30 and I thought it was at 1:30, anyway, he and I have this relationship, he's a great doctor and knows when I need to see him, so he fit me in after his last patient....

So my husband and I met with him and we went over all of my results which turned up pretty much nil in the way of trying to figure out what is causing all my issues, but he said something that really made me think.....he said "You know you were dying" and I think I missed what ever else he said after that.....and I began to think to myself for the first time, my God, I did almost die, they did everything they could do and I lived and I am still alive. I have problems, some I may never quite recover from completely, but I am still alive.

We all forget that on days when we are feeling our worst and often wondering why God has dealt us the hand he has, when we are hurting still many months later, that there is another story we sometimes fail to consider, the side that was fighting to keep us alive.....

So I guess with all things considered, I'm one of the lucky ones.

4/2/08

Goodnight......



I Believe Lyrics

I read a blog post by Butterfly Wife tonight that had me thinking about some things.......the troubles that we endure during deployments, the almosts on the highway, the child that was rushed to the emergency room, you wait wondering, scared......alone.

I could write a book about the tragedies that have befallen my family, but what I started to think about was the fact that we as military wives, we are able to do almost anything. I don't mean in a professional way, I mean we soar over and above these troubling times......is it our strength, our independence, or our endurance.......maybe a little of all, but today I looked up into a puffy cloud and saw something miraculous.....I saw me, and 40 years of overcoming and realized that I grew from it..........and then for the first time in months, I cried.

These deployment angels as she called them.....they are here if you know where to look....or to listen......today I heard three songs on different stations, and no they were not Christian stations, but Country stations and one in particular stuck in my mind.

Call it serendipity, call it what ever you will......but I believe...thank you BW for reminding us all of these ANGELS.........

~Goodnight, may God watch over you as you dream...........

~ASW