Lay over...

I am writing this at 0805 on Tuesday November 30^th (1605 in Baghdad). We have been in the air for hours and hours, have crossed the _____ ocean, eaten bad airplane food and have gotten horrible rest. My neck is stiff and hurting, my feet are swollen and I am tired. I honestly can’t wait until we land. We had a layover in Germany which was interesting to say the least. We landed around 0445 Indiana time and 1045 Germany time. I have no idea how long we were there, I would estimate an hour or so. When we arrived it was 22 F and snow covered the ground. We got off the plane and loaded these busses that took us to our ‘holding area.’ This consisted of a bunch of chairs, an eating area, computers with overpriced internet access, and a small gift shop full of over priced items complete with a German speaking employee. I took in my carry on bag and immediately went to the restroom to brush my teeth, wash my face, and reapply deodorant. Feeling fresh, I headed out to look around. I spent way too much money on gifts to send home to a few people…but I think they will enjoy them. After walking around the small condensed area full of soldiers headed all over the world, it was time to go. We, once again, boarded the plane and continued on our voyage to our final destination. I am now sitting on the plane watching Iron Man II after eating a delicious German made airplane meal. (it really was good) We are expected to land in the next few hours (whatever that means…) and we should start inprocessing. The good news is, since we will arrive before midnight on the 30^th of November, we will get all of our taxes back for that month! J Yippee!!

Again…I will post this as soon as I get internet access that doesn’t cost a gagillion dollars.

Take off…

So, my journey has begun. Officially. I can’t tell you how I expected my last day, at our MOB station. I thought—I’m going to call everyone and say a last goodbye. I’m going to text every contact in my phone and tell everyone how much I will miss them while I’m gone (and remind them to send me packages!) I’m going to be strong, and ready. I mean….we’ve been in training for the past two months. I should be ready, right?

Whew, I mean with the way my life has gone you would think that I know ALL about how differently things that are planned out in your head are from reality.

Reality left me in a place deep, deep inside trying to figure out what I wanted out of this deployment. I keep telling myself that I am going to grow on this deployment. Physically, mentally, emotionally, educationally, etc. I want to become a better person. I don’t want to focus, really, on anyone but myself. But the reality of things is that I am constantly surrounded by people. I have spent the past 2 months stateside finding a balance between realizing my goals and reality. I can’t tell you that I have found that balance, but I am working on it. My four day pass at home gave me some guidance and wisdom from my ‘family’ members. It left me with confidence that I am indeed a smart woman who has achieved much. (see last post) With all the things I have accomplished, I can conquer the world if I choose to. My worst downfall is my attitude :-/ oops.

It is hard for me to watch stupidity and go on about my day. I am getting better at realizing what is important and not. Whether something will directly effect me or not. And if it indeed does not affect me, then I have no business trying to rectify the situation.

Back to today. (29NOV and who knows when this will get posted as I have no idea when I will be able to get back online, so I am writing this on Word to transfer later) We had an early-ish formation, went about cleaning the barracks, and packing our last duffel bag to load onto the plane. My two most trusted friends and I went to Subway to have one last breakfast together in Indiana, then back to the barracks to sit around and wait. Pointless formations and standing around left us with plenty of time to carry out my plans of talking to my loved ones and texting to my little heart’s content. Instead, I just wasn’t in the mood to talk. I was enjoying the company of my friends’ from the other platoons. (yes, the people who I will be around for the next year…I don’t get it either, but it’s the past so…it happened) I did talk to my mom and texted my best friend all day in short increments. It just wasn’t what I expected. I didn’t feel like talking for some reason. Then at around 1600 when the busses pulled around the corner and the volunteers from the USO started to line the street we were going to leave on…I started a little anxiety attack. I mean, we really are leaving. This isn’t fake anymore. We aren’t just training. We are going overseas. Wow. Deep breath. Okay. I can do this.

It became a whole new animal. The realization should have hit me way before, but for some reason it didn’t. The little old ladies walked around handing us crosses, and little wooden nickels that we can trade in for beer when we get back, while giving us hugs telling us “ We’ll see you when you get home” This was such a nice gesture and all I could think about was ‘psch…this is NOT my home. I don’t know who lied to you’

So, away we went. We boarded the busses and waved to the 8-10 volunteers lined up on the street waving American flags thoughts racing in our minds. And you know what I thought about? Spain. For some reason all I could think about was my unsure trip to Spain that I want to take during my 2 week R&R. As we arrived at the international airport, I made sure to charge my phone and text/call as much as possible, but at this point there was not much time left. Next think I knew we were in line to board the plane about an hour earlier than scheduled and I was on the phone with my mom trying to get out a proper goodbye. What is that? How does one execute a proper goodbye?? Is there a class I should have taken to learn this skill?? I will never know. As I did say goodbye, I informed her that I have no idea when I will be able to talk to her again. I know that it will happen, but I suspect that it will be about a week until I will have the means to contact her.

Thankfully I am sitting by my two battle buddies & we are having a ‘good time’ ;-) ….or as good of a time as you can have on a 20+ hour flight to a foreign country we are at war with. We are stopping in Germany, and are only on our first leg of the trip. Right now it is 2345 and I am finding it almost impossible to sleep for some reason. But, I’ll make it! The flight attendants are playing movie after movie, Inception, Sherlock Holmes while serving below par chicken and beef warmed up in a microwave….they’re trying. Between movies they show our time, the time it is where we will land, our flight speed and temperature outside. It’s about 5:45am in Germany, we are going about 1045 mph and it is about -65 F outside the plane right now.

I’m going to make it. I can do this. Just pray for me. Send me letters. Send me packages. Get on Skykpe and talk to me sometime. Pray that I keep my goals in my heart and that I don’t forget them for any stupid reason, like losing patience. Pray that I keep my patience.

I'm just sad.

Disclaimer: I am, indeed, emotional.

Big hot tears roll down my face as I drive away from my "family's" house headed back to Camp Atterbury, Indiana after a too short four day pass at home for Thanksgiving. It was a good day. A hard day, but still a good day. If my emotions could be personified, riding a roller coaster--they would be sick to the point of vomiting.
Rewind to this morning:
:-) I woke up happy in my own very warm bed, ate a delicious breakfast of grits and yogurt with Michigan blueberries handpicked by family friends, took a shower and proceeded to get back into ARMY mode.
:-( Army socks, boots, pants, shirt, jacket.....and....I'm a soldier again. This time for a long time. :-) Mom and I ran some errands, did some last minute packing and headed over to Grammy's house to say goodbye's there.
:-( Gram didn't take it too well, but it helped that Aunt Ginger and Uncle Bob were there with Harmony to help soften the hurt. Even if I was gone, she still had them there at least until tomorrow. So a sad goodbye for them, but not so much for me.
:-) It was sad....but I was also excited to go see my 'other' family :-) in Forsyth. Away we went!!

Let me pause this roller coaster ride to say how grateful I am to ALL of my family, related and unrelated, immediate and extended, friends who are family, and family who are friends. I am thankful for each and every one of you. We had a discussion after a delicious thanksgiving meal with a second cousin about how our 'family' has spread to the winds and we don't have the kinds of communication needed to keep that family bond together. It's no one's fault per se, but it is just fact. And the fact of the matter is, besides the Thanksgiving meal and an occasional Christmas gathering at someone's house....we are strangers to each other. My cousins don't know anything about me, nor do my aunts and uncles. The information they do know about me, they must find out from someone other than myself because I never talk to them. We don't talk on the phone, write letters, email, text, or even Facebook. All of these avenues of communication are open, and I have set up different trips throughout the years to visit different members of my family who I would like to be closer to and these trips have deepened the original bond of family.
No matter what, we share some DNA and in some cases the same name.

But this is not what I need. I am the only child of a single mother. Smart, athlete, outgoing, dedicated and focused on success. I have no father to speak of, which eliminates half of my blood related family right there. Imagine it as a lightening striking dead half of my tree. Therefore, I am already short changed on the family tree. Add in the fact that there is no communication. No water going to the branches of my remaining scrawny family tree, I am not left with very much to go off of. I have some roots, my grandmother and mother, myself as the trunk, and a couple of branches (selected aunts and uncles, one or two cousins) and a few leaves (young babies of said cousins) So, please don't blame me if I prefer to pick up my roots, grow wings, and find happiness elsewhere. In a perfect world in my situation, extended family would have picked up the slack and we would have been a tight family unit. But, that is hard to do when we span the entire United States. No one's fault...just not what I need.

God has blessed me. I have been given a loving, caring home where I fit in and belong. When I look back at my life and think of all the good memories, I realize that I have had a family all along. There has been hurt and pain. Love and Joy. Sadness and suffering. We have fallen apart and come back together. I love them. They love me.
I am so proud of my little sister. She is one of the smartest, talented, most ambitious people I know and I can't wait to see what kind of beautiful woman she will become. I love that we're so close, I only wish that we were closer.
My little brother and I are closer than I even think I know. He has almost every baseball player, team and stat memorized. He is amazing at putting together, in weeks, a 3,000 piece Lego set that is supposed to take months. And he is one of the strongest people I know. He is constantly amazing me with his patience and good spirit in bad times. Life wouldn't be the same without him. I love him to death, even though he'd be mad at me for saying it publicly....I know he loves me back! :)
Mom-mom, perfect title since she is my second mom. My own mother is wonderful, and I am grateful for her and everything that she has, and continues to do for me--but even she is grateful that I have a grounded family atmosphere to partake in and this is what mom-mom provides for us all. She is THE most amazing, strong, structured, intelligent, fun, happy go lucky person I have ever met in my life and she is solely responsible for this Cinderella story. If it wasn't for her introducing herself to my mother, and my mother offering my babysitting services...I wouldn't be typing this today. I want to be just like her someday.
The Orr/Thompson family has welcomed me into their lives with open arms since 1999 and has never let me go. It is because of this that I feel so loved when I go home. I love to see Grama and Grampa, see what kinds of sewing or wood or redecorating or technology projects are going on around the house (or condo, if we happen to meet up in Colorado) and honestly I could go on and on about how happy I am. The real point to all this writing is to get out my emotions for myself, the bi-product being an insight to my mind. I feel like I have written enough this evening to get out enough emotion in order to sleep well.






I am not sad anymore. As cheesy as it sounds I am now full of memories and love as I swaddle myself in "Dad's" company sweatshirt as a security blanket.
Two days and a wake up, and I will be on a plane to a whole new world.

I am home.

racing thoughts, racing thoughts....
I have been home, the place where I was raised, for a little more than 24 hours now.
We started the drive home as soon as I was released around 1200, after a quick break for lunch at Crackel Barrel we continued on. I called ahead to inform my 'family' that we should have dinner as I passed through and I was informed that because of health complications this would not be possible, but a few of us could still go out for something.

Here I am. Sitting here typing. Trying to be completely vague, but I don't want to. I want to say how frustrating this whole situation is. I don't want to go, I don't have enough time with the people I love. And, even worse, because of some stupid illness that decided to invade the life of the people who I've chosen to be my family-I can barely see them at all. It isn't fair, really. I see myself sitting upstairs on the couch talking to mom-mom who is sitting in the brown chair about life. About how much I don't think I can do this. About being surrounded by people who seem slow, and how to deal with it. About feeling alone, but being surrounded by people. And you know what? She tells me, somehow in her own words, that everything is going to be okay. And I believe her. Because she has never lied to me. I love her, and I am scared to death to be away. My sister needs me more than ever, and soon enough I won't even be able to text her every once in awhile...how am I supposed to make sure that everything is okay if I am approx. 7,000 miles away??

I once said that I don't write at night because there are too many uncontrollable emotions...but isn't that what writing is??? Emotions..flowing, streaming, bursting through the floodgates of your mind down your arms into your fingertips and onto the keyboard to print into black and white what is going on in the sea of thoughts and ideas you call your brain.

Well, tonight and all day, as well as yesterday---all I can think about is that the point of this four day pass was to spend time with family. I will, indeed, spend time with extended family. But my mom-mom, my sister, my brother, I might get to see them on Friday morning before I leave to go back. I can't see them because I don't want to risk getting the woman who already has an extremely low white blood cell count and an infection more sick. Its a conundrum, really.
I was told in my childhood that God never gives us more than we cannot handle. I believe that with all my heart and soul, and when He gives me lemons, I make sweet lemonade. But, I also believe in 'living in it'

It is important not to just brush every emotion or feeling to the side and slap a smile on your face. It is important to 'embrace the suck' while it is happening. Hold close to you things that make you hurt, cry, lonely...so that later on in life, you can recognize these feelings and know better how to deal with them. If you are sad, be sad--cry, use up a whole box of kleenex, talk to someone, stay silent, scream if it makes you feel better. Whatever it takes, live it. Then let it go. If you are angry or upset, try to watch what you say to others..but be mad, punch a pillow, throw the son of a bitch across the room, who cares? Live it, then quickly let it go. The key is, letting it go. If you don't let it go, it will embrace you. However, the same goes for happiness and love. The only difference is to not let these go. If you are happy, or feel love...hold on for dear life because you never know when anger, or fear, or sadness will try to come grab onto you again. But when it does, you will know what each one feels like and will know how to handle it.

So, as I type, I feel it. I feel the sadness, the feeling of unfairness, the disappointment that things aren't the way I planned in my head. But I have felt these things before and have been happy since then. And so I know that, even today, I have been happy. I have felt joy. I know that when I leave, I will have a mix of bitter sadness and excitement with anticipation. I will embrace it, just like every other time. And, of course, I will write.

The calm before the storm..

...sand storm, that is!

Well hello everyone!! Most everyone reading this, I will see in the next week whether you know it or not :) And I couldn't be more excited!

There has been quite the lull in my posts for multiple reasons. The most debilitating was the crashing of my hard drive. I was SO upset!! I think it fell off a foot locker (box at the end of a bed about a foot high, most resembling a chest) and it messed it up. BIG TIME. I was running a bunch of programs and they started running real slow, so I restarted the computer only to have it reboot to a gray screen with a flashing question mark. No good. So I called Apple to report the issue and see what my options were....after talking to them for hours on the phone and crying to one poor customer service guy about how I had less than two weeks to get this issue fixed and I was leaving the country and how my computer was my main source of communicating with my family...I was advised to call the company who installed my new hard drive this past July. I did, and they said that it would be no problem and that the repair was most likely covered under warranty! This coupled with the check I would receive from Apple for the hard drive failing left me coming out on top!! My computer was gone for 5 days and I got it back the day before we left for the field for 5 days and there was no way that I was going to take my newly repaired computer out to the field! So, another 5 days of no means to post...

Now, I am sitting in my rack--eyeballs hurting because I'm so tired--but also so excited. My mom is sitting in a hotel less than an hour away only waiting for the sun to come out to come get me and take me home!! Oh, home!! It brings a tear to my eye. I miss home. This whole experience the past two months has made me appreciate everything that I have had the past 23 years, and I just want it back.
Tonight, the girls from 1st platoon celebrated our 'thanksgiving' together with pizza and coke :) we played spades and shared about each other. It was a really great time and I honestly enjoyed myself. I talked with my bunk mate tonight after everyone left our 'house' (see photo) about how our platoon has the most bonded females out of everyone. If you haven't lived with 50 females with NO personal space, please do not even try to understand. Everyone has something to say ALL the time. There are some people who I really can not comprehend how they can have that much negativity before breakfast! It's like they wake up angry at the world. But, tonight, we really bonded and it was good for us. I finally shared with the other girls (my battle, White, has already been knowing) about Clare and my story, which I think completely shocked them, and we all really had a good time hanging out.
Tomorrow by this time I will be in MY bed!

I would write more, but I am too anxious to even talk about feelings. That will have to come another day!! :)

ps one week from tomorrow I'll be on a plane to the Middle East.

Aw, here we go!

First of all, let me share that I have been raised to be a strong, independent woman by my mother. She has taught me to never let people walk over me, and that I can do whatever I put my mind to. These characteristics I have adopted have led me to where I am today. I am here at my mobilization training. We have been here for four full days and already stresses are high. Mostly because of all the lack of communication and confusion in relation to our training and what we are doing here. We have received new gear, painful shots, tons of paperwork and WAY better food than in Salina ;) it's always about the food. Most of our time is spent at this appointment or that one, listening to this brief or getting this box checked off for these people whose job it is to get us out of the country.
The other night, I was finally given an opportunity to do some physical training (PT) by way of playing 5 games of basketball. Boy, was I tired! ----but it felt SO good to get some stress out on the court, let me tell you!! I have so many little stories to tell; like the one where we were walking to the gym in the dark and a drunk soldier in civilian clothes came up to us (it was one of his last nights before heading off to Iraq) with his sober buddies to talk to us. Or how there is a minimal security prison/jail on post that we have to walk past everyday in order to get to the chow hall and how I walked past today semi alone (my pals were up ahead of my about 20 feet) and one of the males bee lined to me at the fence and yelled out 'Hey girl! Why are you all by yourself?' and I just yelled out 'MOFFETT!!!!!!' real loud (Moffett is the name of one of the guys who was walking ahead of me) to let the guy know that I was NOT by myself. Haha! Or how some of these females need to leave me alone or I'm going to snap!
Like I said, stresses are high--and sleep is short lived, so I'm going to hit the rack for the night. I just thought it was time for a more regular update.

I miss all of you, and dream of home daily.

Title 10

Things are coming to a close. I am officially an active duty soldier as of today. I report tomorrow evening and will begin my journey to our mobilization site. As I sit here, contemplating my life, I wonder about how I got here. Nothing in my recent, or even distant past hints to this change of events that has me on my way to a deployment in a little over a month. High school was rough, as it is for every teenager--but it was still an amazing experience. I was all-academic, swim team captain, varsity letter all four years. I was in honors courses and participated in a plethora of extra curricular activities including but not limited to science club, flag squad, and choir. I graduated with National Honor Society GPA and went off to find myself at college..instead I found friends, all nighters, and a boy named Casey.
I thought my life was complete. I transferred to the University of Kansas where I was going to finish my degree as Casey finished his--we were going to get married and start a wonderful life together, until we ended up pregnant.
One surprise event and a year can change so much....
A year later, I was single, without child, and enlisting in the Army National Guard. It is amazing how life can change in one year. I was on a path, a planned, chosen path. I loved my path, I walked my path with joy and happiness--but all of a sudden in on year--my path took an unexpected turn. The environment around me on the path turned cold, there was snow and ice. I had been dressed for summer and the beach--I wasn't prepared for this unexpected change. People ask me about my life during the time when the path turned and I honestly can't speak on it very well. I don't even know what happened myself. All I know is that I was headed off to the Army. I am just now thawing from the flash winter that I experienced.
Just in time.
I have learned to embrace whatever comes my way. Live moment by moment, because I never know when something--some unexpected event is going to change my life forever. So, I live it. Every smile. Every tear. Every upset stomach and anxiety attack. Every laugh. Every embarrassment. I live it.