New Challenge

I know it's been a while, but honestly, you'd have to live the last year of my life to believe it. My husband was severely injured, and then I got off my tooshy and dropped 40 pounds and reinvented myself as a competitive figure athlete. I still blogged, but rather than here, I created a different blog, The Incredible Shrinking Mom which come to think of it, I also need to update. Silly me..lol.

I'm getting my routines back together and finding a balance in my life. I confess, I tend to go overboard in one direction or another. Balance is something I have to work hard to find. While amusing the crap out of myself by reading several public domain books on being a housewife printed between the late 1800's and the 1950's (seriously hilarious stuff, and sometimes quite sad. There was an entire chapter in one about Eugenics. Here I was thinking this stuff only happened in Germany. I guess history really is written by the victor, but I digress. While hunting up more hilarity I discovered one I actually wanted to read. It's called 31 Days to Clean-having a Martha house the Mary way.

I'll be the first to admit, I'm more of a Mary. Emotion is the name of my game, but unlike most women out there, I kinda long to be the Martha. (Interesting Observation, boy did Martha Stewart live up to her name!!) The author doesn't claim to be a born Martha, and starts off by saying this is NOT a how to clean your house book. If you want one of those, Martha Stewart wrote one about housekeeping I want but refuse to buy as it's not on Kindle.

Today is my first day and today's challenge is to write a mission statement. Well that's today's Mary challenge anyway.

"Identify specific reasons you want to make your home a haven, and then complete a mission statement based on those reasons. Write down exactly why you want a clean home. Be specific. Maybe your mission will be in the form of a paragraph, a poem or a list. Consider adding a verse or a quote that motivates you. When you are finished, it should take you no longer than a minute to read over your "mission statement". Now dress it up! make it pretty, put it in a frame, just be creative and have fun. Put it somewhere where you can see it every day."

So here is my mission statement:

"To provide my family with a healthy, safe and welcoming home, where they can both be comfortable hanging out, and feel comfortable inviting people over".

There are reasons for this. The first part is obvious. All children should have a save and healthy home. That's a given, if they don't, they need to be living somewhere else. The second part is personal as is the third. Have you ever been in an immaculate home? Perhaps a friend invited you over, or a relative? How often do you feel at ease in these homes? I don't. A friend growing up had the most beautiful home. It was always amazingly clean and fresh, and I adored being there. At the same time, I was always nervous being there. It felt almost like a museum. I was always concerned about fingerprinting a wall, tracking dirt in, breaking something. You get the idea.

This is in contrast to my own home growing up which while not filthy, was never clean enough for me to feel comfortable inviting my friends over. If they did come by, i would immediately drag them to my own bedroom. My parents both worked full time so I don't fault either one of them as it was my responsibility to keep the house. I just never knew how.

So that's my mission statement and my Mary Challenge.

The Martha challenge involves putting together a list of all the cleaning supplies for all the Martha challenges in the book.

The Homefront Honey challenge is to blog about these challenges every day. :) If you'd like to join along, check out Amazon, as this book is in fact on the kindle. Even if you don't have a kindle, you can download the kindle software for your computer for free and read it that way.

Have a blessed day!!

Surviving Christmas

No, it wasn't the name of some seriously funny Tim Allen christmas flick ((does he even make any other kind??)), this was christmas again this year. It was our second christmas in a row with DH downrange and it came pretty close to sucking. Christmas Eve found me sobbing in my room, miserable beyond all comprehension and willing myself to get it all out that way I could still give the kids a good cheerful christmas the next day. We ate dinner with my friend J and her family. I have to tell you, I almost backed out at the last second pleading exhuastion. Facing a happy family on christmas wasn't really something that I thought I was ready for. But I'ms o glad I went. It's so easy for me to forget how much human contact helps. How being around friends and family on the holidays can ease that stabbing pain to a dull throb.

It's been kind of rough talking to DH the past few weeks. He got a crappy location, complete with lack of computers. I bought him a laptop but it's shipping here from the states so I can make sure everythign is already loaded and ready for use. I don't have time to explain to DH how to download yahoo messenger for instance. Okay, so I have time. Lots of time. But I have no patience for it. He no longer asks me for help at home either because after teh third time he asks I kick him out of the chair and do it for him. Its one of the many reasons I gave up on the idea of being a teacher.

But now school has resumed and I'm strugglign to get back into the swing of things. I'm exhausted because once again, I stayed up all night reading. I'm going to have to invest in a timer to keep myself from doin that anymore. It's getting kind of ridiculous to realize how late it is because the sun is coming up and then trying to stay awake through out the day.

I've been doing my flylady routines and tehy're helping immensely. I on't really want to face what kind of disaster area this house would be without at least following through my evening routines. I even went and got the frugal e book from Savingdinner.com Now there's something that's worth the cost! Ten dollars for twelve weeks of six serving dinner plans, complete with shopping lists. My kids love it and I have no excuse for Burger King when I have everything on hand. I suppose that means I'll lose more weight too. :D But all in all, we're still alive here, still struggling at times, but still alive. That's got to count for something.

He's gone.

And it blows. At least the waiting until it starts is over. Now I just have to get myself into a routine. Except that for now all I want to do is lay on the couch and cry.

I'll start my routine tomorrow.

countdown

The Countdown

It sucks. Every day, waiting for that call to come in that's going to change your life. Wondering if your husband wants space while he prepares, or if you are giving him space, does he think that you are trying to distance yourself already? It's a nightmare. And then on top of it all, creeps in this overwhelming feeling that you want the damn thing to start already so it can be over already. Then you feel guilty for wishing your spouse out the door.

Deployment Madness people. I've had my fill and yet here we go around again. We've been through this enough time to catch ourselves when we start picking fights so we don't miss one another as much ((total lie by the way. You'll miss each other more and have guilt on top of everything else)).

Generally with each deployment comes something I like to call Sergeant Murphy's Law. Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong while your spouse is downrange. Some of my personal favorites include breaking down in the high desert of California with a preschooler, a toddler, an infant and a dog, and my daughter knocking out her two front teeth jumping on her bed. Everyone has their favorite Sgt. Murphy's Law story. I know of one lady who actually set fire to her oven and blew out the electricity for her entire building on thanksgiving one year.

Generally with Sgt. Murphy's law, you get some leeway, if only a day or two, after the deployment starts. Ours hasn't even begun yet but here we go already. My infant daughter I. is not gaining weight. At all. She's hitting all of her milestones to be sure, down to crawling around the house and eating solid foods like a champ. But she's only eleven pounds. So we get to go through the barrage of testing that her pediatrician feels is necessary at this point. poor baby was stuck twelve times without them getting a single drop of blood from her before they let me take her home. And now S. has gotten an infection. We spent the entire day in the Acute Care Clinic dealing with a 105 degree fever. The docs kept saying she didn't look like she had a 105 fever, I must be exaggerating. So they'd take her temp and realize i was right, not being overprotective. And then ten minutes later a new doc would come in and it would start all over again.

Perhaps this means that I'm getting it all out of the way now, and I won't have to deal with it after he leaves. There's no way I could get that lucky, but hey, a girl can hope right? I think DH may be winding up his call to his mother so I think it's safe to venture back into the room and spend some time cuddling with him before he goes.

Deployment Length and the right to support

Can somebody pleeease tell me why it is only okay to seek out support if your spouse deploys for 12-15 months? Not everybody gets that option. My husband for example deploys individually. His deployments are shorter, but he deploys more frequently. His last deployment was for six months, and he's been home six months. We barely recieved word that he'll be leaving asap for a nine month deployment again. because it is only a nine month deployment, he won't be eligible for R&R. BUT, because it's only a nine month deployment I've been made to feel like I don't get the right to support, or to be upset. It's frustrating. We're still missing our second christmas in a row, he'll still miss B's second birthday just like he missed his first, he wont' be there for I's first birthday either. I understand that most of this is par for the course. But what is usually par for the course is the ability to commiserate with others who are going through the same seperation. I don't get that opportunity, and generally it doesn't bother me as much, but today it's irking me to no end. Not to mention that after he gets back, he'll still only get a few months stabilization before he's gone again. What's more is that because he deploys individually, his unit's FRG is of no help at all. As a matter of fact, when he was injured on his last deployment and was meddivaced out for surgery, it was I who called his unit to inform them, not the other way around.

Sometimes I wonder if it would be easier if he was part of a normal unit. He could deploy with people he knows and trusts, and I wouldn't have to feel like I have no right to miss him. Not to mention how nice it would be not to get dirty looks from the women whose husbands are gone in the commissary when he's home and shopping with me. I don't shoot them dirty looks when their husbands are home when mine isn't.

Sometimes the military community can be the greatest place in the world, but there are times, and now feels like one of them, where it's a case of one upping each other over whose got it the worst. Why can't we just agree that our lives are difficult in general and be miserable together? While I don't envy you your fifteen month deployments, my nine month deployment with five children, overseas isn't exactly a picnic either.

Here we go again

First, a little about me. I'm Kayti. I have five children of my own and a stepson who lives in Georgia with his mother. I also have a husky puppy who is the bane of my existance. My husband's name is Ben. Everyone else I ever blog about including my children, I'll either nickname or I'll abbreviate to their first initial. This is for persec. Or for you civilians out there, personal security. I don't know what kind of whackjobs are out there reading this.

I'm an army wife. Hence the name of my blog. My husband is preparing to head out on his third deployment. We've had little to no warning about this one and he only came home a few months ago so I'm a little on the irked side. But life is what it is so all I can do is paste on a smile, stick some love notes in his rucksack and start planning his care packages.

I'm an avid quilter and knitter. Actually, I love crafting of all types. So I may post progress on my various works in progress ((or WIP's)) from time to time. To tell you the truth, I'm not certain what I'll be blogging about in general. Blogging has helped me through his last two deployments. I know it will help me with this one.

Welcome to The Yellow Ribbon. Welcome to my life.