Saturday, April 30, 2011

Just need to vent!

My nephew had a puppet competetion today. He did exceptionally well and his group won 1st place in their division. Yay!!! I am so proud of him.

Me and J went to watch and let me tell you the stuff leding up to the puppet part was boring. My nephew had trouble sitting still, but hey so did I. I can't blame the poor little guy.

All the other kids in his group seemed to have had a portable game system of some sort. His aunt from the other side of his family doesn't allow that sort of stuff. Well J pulled out his phone because he has games on it. Nephew sat there very quietly playing the game. I heard that if his father (my brother) wants him to behave badly and have bad habits that will have to be when he is with him. Umm he is sitting there quietly with the game. Without the game is his fidgeting, talking, and just being a bored little boy.

During intermission, the other aunt jumped all over my nephew because he is not to be playing games he is to be paying attention. I totally get that he needs to learn to sit quietly through boring stuff, but he is 7. His attention span is about the size of a pin prick. 3 hours is a long time to expect him to sit there and be good all the while everyone else has something to do.

Me and J had to leave shortly there after for fear that a scene would be caused. After we left I called my brother and he was not surprised. I told him that she might need to be reminded that she is not in charge and she is no better than me. We are both this boy's aunt and if I can get him to behave and she can't then she should be happy. I am not going to have her dictate how I treat my nephew and if he is behaving in a situation like that, then that is all that matters.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Tornados

The southeast has been hit hard with tornados. I think I read somewhere that there were something like 148 reported tornados. Unfortunetly my hometown suffered from those tornados. Last I had heard 7 dead, hundreds injured, and hundreds homeless.

I am very thankful that my family is alright. Unfortunetly a girl I went to school with lost her father. Another friend lost a friend. And I can't even begin to list the friends that's family has had damage to their homes.

I have sat here almost all day watching facebook, listening to the live feed of the 911 scanner for Greene County, and calling friends and checking on them. My heart just breaks everytime I hear something else bad or see another devastating picture.

I feel like I should be on my way home to help. But what can I do? I don't own a chainsaw so I can't help with the downed trees. I don't know the first thing about home repairs so can't help there. I feel so helpless, like there is something that I should be doing, besides sitting here crying. So I have been doing the only thing I know how to do at this point in time. And that is PRAY.

I have prayed for the families. I have prayed for the rescue workers out there searching for the missing and recovering the deceased. That must be hard. I pray for the Drs and nurses at the hospitals. I pray that these people that have been devastated and nowhere to live have insurance that will help them rebuild, because of course this had to happen in one of the poorer sections of the county.

If the tornados were not bad enough, there are now people that are coming into the devastated areas and stealing what is still good. How can these people do this? Do they have no conscense? I truely hope that these scumbags rot in hell.

Monday, April 25, 2011

Just Married

For the first time in over 2 years I feel like I am married. This is the first time that we don't have training or a deployment looming over our heads. I am just as happy now as I was the day we got married.

After the wedding it was a feeling of dread because I knew we only had a few weeks to move and get ready for him to leave for BCT. We went 90 days with little communication. After the 90 days was AIT, we had better communication and I lived close enough that I could visit, but the visits were only once a month.

After AIT we got stationed here and had less than a month to gear up for JRTC. There went a month with zero communication. But we made it through.

After JRTC we had about 8 weeks before deployment. Deployment communication varied greatly. In the beginning there was a ton of communication, then it went to once every 10 days, down to a couple times a month at best.

We have no training scheduled in the near future, deployment is set for late 2012-early 2013. No commitments that will keep us away from each other for any length of time.

So it looks like for atleast the next year and a half its going to be a "normal" life. We go to work, well he goes to work until I find a job, come home and get up and do it all over again the next day. We have lived on hardly no communication for 2 years now. I hope we have things to talk about. I hope we still like each other as much as we did when we were just living together. Everyone says marriage changes things so I guess we will see.

But for now I am going to enjoy the "Just Married" feeling. I will worry about the old married couple later.

Monday, April 18, 2011

Changes

We went back to our hometown this past weekend and if I heard it once I heard it a hundred times. J just isn't the same, have you noticed? How can I not notice? People act like it is some big surprise that he has changed. After the things he has done and seen, I can't say I blame him.

He is so angry all the time. It is almost like he is looking for an argument. My brother told him that he was an a$$hole to everyone but me. Guess it could be worse he could be an a$$hole just to me. I am just waiting for a major blowup between him and someone, not sure yet who but someone.

His language is terrible. Now I cuss so I can't say much, but his is terrible. It is almost like he cusses just to hear him cuss. Its F this or S.O.B. that. Quite frankly I am tired of listening to it. It is not so bad if we are at home, but its like we get out in public and he has no filter what so ever.

J has admitted that he is having anger issues and is willing to seek treatment, but his cussing I was told that he wasn't changing it. Guess I am either going to have to hope that he calms it down, get used to it,or quit going places with me.

I am beginning to wonder if all of this is part of his readjustment period or if it is something more serious. I have read up on PTSD and even TBI. He is showing signs of PTSD, but then again he has only been back for a little over 2 weeks so it still could be readjustment.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

The new normal

So many people have said that I should be happy that my life is back to normal. I am so happy my husband is home safe. What they don't understand that for 10 months my normal was having a deployed husband. Before that my normal was having a husband that I only was able to see for a couple days a month because he was in AIT and before that he was in BCT so the only form of communication we had was the old fashion writing letters and sending them through the mail. We have not had a "normal" marriage like people with no affiliation to the military have.

At homecoming the MFLC (Military Family Life Councilor) asked me how long I had been married. My response to that was 2 years legally, but it only feels like 6 months because that is all we have been together. Those 6 months weren't even consecutive, that is a couple weeks here and a month there.

My new normal is now having a husband that I have been with for 6 years that sometimes I don't feel like I know who he is anymore. His new normal is feeling like a stranger to his own wife. That is all stuff that we have to work through and we will find yet again a new normal for us, only then to adapt to yet another change whether it be another deployment or a PCS or maybe even something totally different that I have not even considered yet.

I was told that I should be relieved that he is home. Yes I am relieved, my husband walked off that plane and didn't come home any other way. But this war doesn't stop because he is home. 2 days after he came home I got word that a friend had been KIA. How can anyone be relieved that they have to tell their husband that a friend had died? How can anyone be relieved that in a few short months her husband will be training to go back to the same hell that he just came home from?

Did I know what I was getting into? Yes I did. I know all the possibilities of being married to a man in the military, the good the bad and the ugly. Was I prepared for this? I like to think I was as prepared as one can be that has never had to experience any of this. I hope next deployment I am a little bit more prepared because I know what to expect.

I guess the whole point of this rambling is that I don't need people telling me I should be this or I should be that. I am not them, I have not walked in their shoes nor have they in mine. I am full of emotions at this point in time and I have to be the one to work through them. I don't need someone that hardly knows me and/or has never taken the time to get to know me tell me how I should feel or what I should do. What I need is for people to keep their opinions to themselves and let me and J figure it out on our own, because I can promise that we will figure out what is best for us long before anyone else will.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Homecoming

Saturday evening J came home. It was the best feeling in the world. I didn't actually see him walk off the plane, but seeing him walk up the flight line, then watching them march into the hangar was amazing. I am crying just thinking about it. We were able to spend 15 minutes together before they had to go turn in their weapons and SI. After a couple hours he was able to come home. I use the term home loosely, yes it is now his home, but it is not set up and everything is not moved in yet.

The transition of him now being home has went fairly smoothly. We were looking for a washer and dryer and he decided he needed to tuck in his shirt, so while we are standing in the middle of the store he undoes his pants and starts tucking in his shirt. I was mortified, but he was like I have been around nothing but men for 10 months.

Once we get everything moved in and get settled in I think we will be able to get back to a more normal way of life.