May 09, 2008

MILESTONES

When we started trying to have a baby a year and a half ago, my husband was dismayed that he hadn't reached two goals yet: he wanted to have X amount of net worth, and he wanted to be finished with his MBA. But that was our safe year, so we had to take advantage of his non-deployable status.

Well, last month we hit that X amount of money, and now I'm happy to announce that my husband passed his last two classes right before he deployed and finished his MBA program.

So anyway...Hey, baby, any time you feel like finally joining our family, feel free. Everything's squared away for your arrival. We've got fun knitted animals for you to play with, you've got a dresser full of clothes that the SpouseBUZZers bought for you, and now your screaming won't bother your father while he's trying to do homework.

Anytime now...

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May 08, 2008

UPDATE

I just heard from my husband; he made it to Kuwait. Naturally, they got bumped from heading into Iraq and will be staying there and wasting a few days, which makes you wonder why they had to leave the US in such a rush if they're just gonna sit around, but that's the Army. He sounds good. He said Kuwait looks a whole lot different than it did back in 2004.

I told him I keep forgetting that he's gone, and every time I read a good blog post or article, I forget that I can't show it to him when he gets home.

I'm anxious for a mailing address.

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LINK

Fairness, Idealism, and Other Atrocities

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May 07, 2008

A DEPLOYMENT DAY LIKE NO OTHER

My plans for this week were perfect until my husband's deployment kept getting moved forward. Once that happened, I had to make a very unusual and difficult choice: Do you accept an invitation to the White House on the day your husband is supposed to deploy? Any other invitation in the world, you obviously turn down. But the White House? That's big. That gives you pause.

I asked around, and the general consensus was that other wives would not go to the White House. But I still had to decide for myself. I had a talk with my husband about my choice, and what he said blew my mind. He said, "The White House is the White House, and obviously that's a big deal. But what I think is really important is that you go spend time with your friends, people who love you. You don't have anyone here in town to take care of you while I'm gone, and when else are you going to get the chance to be with your good friends? If they're coming in from all over the country, then you need to go be with people who care about you."

And he was right.

It was so exciting to be able to take this photo on Tuesday:

white_house.jpg

But it honestly means so much more to me to have taken this one:

white_house_SB.jpg

I spent the day surrounded by people who lift my spirits, who make me happy, and who grok what I am going through. They cracked me up and helped me forget my sorrow. And they reminded me of how lucky I am to have them in my life.

My husband was right: I really did need this.

I raced home right after the event and had six hours to spend with my husband before I dropped him off at his unit headquarters to deploy. And we felt good, no tears at all. Just a supplication for me to have "Spartan courage" and for him to "come back with his shield or on it." A quick kiss goodbye, and that was that.

And so the deployment begins.

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May 06, 2008

POETRY WEDNESDAY

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
  And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say
  The breath goes now, and some say, No:

So let us melt, and make no noise,
  No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move,
'Twere profanation of our joys
  To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears,
  Men reckon what it did and meant,
But trepidation of the spheres,
  Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love
  (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
  Those things which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined
  That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assur'd of the mind,
  Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
  Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
  Like gold to aery thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
  As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
  To move, but doth, if th' other do.

And though it in the centre sit,
  Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it,
  And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must
  Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
  And makes me end where I begun.

   -- John Donne

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May 04, 2008

GETTING READY TO LEAVE

The last time my husband deployed, I spent the day before he left sewing new rank on since he got promoted that day. I wish I could tell you what I spent yesterday doing, but it's majorly opsec. It's such a good story and really freaking weird, but alas. Curse my husband's new security clearance!

I wrote about his packing headaches at SpouseBUZZ.

And we've been getting ourselves properly pumped up on dorkosterone before he leaves. I started reading Gates of Fire again. Tonight we're watching his favorite movie: Miracle. And last night we went with his Farsi class buddies to Hooters so he could get his fill of beer and ogling chicks before he leaves.

I feel pretty good this time. I don't feel scared: his job will be low-key. I don't feel bad about the length: we did longer pre-R&R last time than his entire deployment will be this time. And I feel optimistic about our chances with the fertility treatments too.

I just feel a smidge sad that my best friend is leaving me for the rest of 2008.
At least I have Charlie this time.

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May 03, 2008

SIGH

OK, this stopped being funny. My husband's deployment got moved forward again.

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CEREAL

What?

Mothers-to-be who skip breakfast and eat less are more likely to give birth to girls, while moms who consume more calories and a wider range of nutrients — including, specifically, those from breakfast cereal — are more likely to deliver sons.

Wait wait wait. If we want a boy, I have to eat more? Done and done. And I eat breakfast cereal every single day. Sweet, we're golden.

Yeah, um, Tessa brings up the logical question here: Don't males carry the deciding chromosomes? Still, it's an interesting correlation. And if I were any good at conceiving at all, I would give it a try, but we're just gonna have to take what we can get.

Now excuse me while I go eat my breakfast cereal.

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May 02, 2008

YOU MUST BE KIDDING

Why Generation Y is broke

Let me guess...they're retarded?

The 28-year-old New York resident has a master's degree from a prestigious university, a successful career in photography, stamps in her passport from around the globe and, until recently, personal finances that were out of control.
[...]
"[Her accountant] wrote me a letter that said, 'You've got to get your life together! Most of these bills aren't even open.' It was a really humbling thing," Wallace says. "But the next time, all my receipts were on a spreadsheet. No one had ever taught me to make a budget or balance a checkbook."

You're kidding me with this, right? No one ever taught me this either. Actually, that's not true: I think I remember having to balance a fake checkbook sometime around middle school for a math class assignment.

But for real, you have a Masters degree and it never occurred to you that you should keep track of your money? Like maybe use Excel or something, the easiest thing in the world. It does the math for you! I'm sure you're also, like, a total math-ophobe. Like numbers and stuff, ick. Who can do that?

"We're in a generation that was kind of shielded from a lot of financial responsibilities," says Wong. "Twenty years ago, when you were in college you didn't have a credit card, and (now) all of a sudden we had to take on debt to go to college. Then we get out of college and we have to have that handbag and an iPod," she says. "It is so easy to take on debt."

OMG, you did not just say that.

Many of these attitudes are evident in our relationships with our parents. Not for nothing have we been labeled the "boomerang generation": We may not all be living in our parents' wood-paneled basements, but a recent Pew survey found that 68% of baby boomers with kids are supporting an adult child financially.

Yep, I know several of them. And on the other end of the spectrum, you have people like me and my husband who, three years after we got married, sent our parents money for all the things we owed them for over the years. The laptop that I swore to my dad I would help pay for when I was in college, yep, never did. So I paid him back three years after I had passed the laptop on to my brother. Because he's my father and not some money tree. Once I realized the true value of money, I realized how much I'd asked of my parents over the years. And I paid them back.

Because I'm a grown-up, and grown-ups don't whine if they can't afford an iPod and they don't take advantage of other grown-ups, even if they happen to be mommy and daddy.

Why do we seem to get article after article these days about why 20 and 30 year olds can't seem to get their shit together? Quit making excuses for them like they weren't taught this in school or it's predatory lenders' fault. No one made her buy the handbag. When I was in college, I had a credit card with a $10,000 limit. I never put a dime on it. It was for emergencies only, and I knew the freaking definition of an emergency. It sure isn't Needing An iPod.

And no one had to teach me that! My parents didn't have to sit down and tell me what I could or could not put on a credit card. It's common freaking sense to not spend money you don't have.

Yeesh.

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May 01, 2008

HILARIOUS

The funniest thing happened today. My mother-in-law sent us a package. My husband was on the phone with her while I opened it up, and I looked in the plastic bag that was on top. I said, "Um...it's a dead bird." My husband said, "What? She says it's something knitted."

It seems the Hitler cat killed a bird, and they put it in a bag and out in the garage to dispose of. And somehow that bag got grabbed when she went to put bags in the package for padding. It was the funniest thing ever. I can now say my mother-in-law mailed me a dead animal. I think that is a riot. My new favorite story.

The unfunniest thing also happened today. My husband's deployment got moved forward. He leaves soon now.

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THE HERE AND NOW

A thought from Rachel Lucas:

IÂ’m pretty sure the multitude of African tribes who sold other Africans into slavery havenÂ’t apologized, either. TheyÂ’re still doing it, actually, but you never hear about that. All guys like Wright care about is what didnÂ’t happen to them at the hands of people who are no longer alive. You know, sometimes I wonder what hut-dwelling, persecuted, starving, or enslaved Africans - who are alive and dying right this second - would think about American blacks like Wright and Cone, if they could know about them. Which they canÂ’t because they live in abject poverty and terror and donÂ’t have a lot of spare time to surf the internet, seeing as how theyÂ’re so busy running from machete slaughters and waiting for their cup of rice each day, that is if it isnÂ’t hijacked by other Africans with guns.

I wonder how “supported” they would feel in their “blackness” to know that wealthy, intelligent, resourceful black Americans spend so much time and effort pounding away on shit that happened here hundreds of years ago instead of directing all that rage at injustice towards Africa itself. You know, maybe actually helping black people who need it about a million times more than your average Detroit gangbanger. Just a thought I have sometimes.

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