July 25, 2008

HE CRACKS ME UP

I posted at SpouseBUZZ: My husband's got jokes:

The other day, I set my purse down in the living room and walked down the hallway. A minute later, I hear the cell phone ringing. I run down the hall, rummage through my purse like a madwoman, and grab the cell phone right as it stops ringing. I recognize the displayed number as my husband calling from Iraq. And I'm standing there with the cell phone in my hand as he's leaving a voice message. No way to call him back or to let him know that I'm stupidly holding the phone.

That's excruciating.

I sent him an email later, saying that I was dying as he left that message, and that if he ever doesn't reach me on the cell phone in the future, he should hang up and try back one more time. Chances are I'm rummaging through my disaster of a purse, which is always what happens when my phone rings.

So a day or two later, he calls again and I miss it, but he calls right back. After we get off the phone, I go to my voicemail and hear what he left after the first call: a sing-songy teasing voice saying, "I'm not calling back -- you shoulda gotten to the phone in time! Just kidding..."

My husband's got jokes.

After I came up with that post, I went outside for a moment and my husband called again and I missed him. This voicemail said sarcastically, "You'd think with your new eyeballs you could find your phone faster."

That man.

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UNDERWHELMED

I woke up this morning a tad underwhelmed. I didn't feel safe driving myself to my appointment, so my friend took me. The doctor said he likes his patients to be at least 20/25 by the next day, and I'm 20/30. Now, that's WAY better than what I can see without my glasses, but I still feel like I'm in a little bit of a fog. Some of that could go away in time, and I freaking hope so because I certainly won't be happy that I spent thousands of dollars to still need glasses. I go back in a week to see if there's progress. But the pessimist in me thinks that this might just be one more nail in my loss-of-faith coffin.

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July 24, 2008

EYEBALL UPDATE

So, the lasik, eh?

I went in and waited and waited; naturally they were behind schedule. There were two other ladies in the waiting room who had done the surgery a few years ago and who were in for a touch-up. They said that, even with having to have a touch-up, they would do it again in a heartbeat. They also said that there's no pain whatsoever.

Hmmm, I am not sure I agree with that.

I went in and they numbed my eye and drew marks on it with a marker. That's because of astigmatism; apparently when you sit up straight, your eyeball is in a different shape than when you lie down, so they have to mark you sitting up before they recline you. Then they took me in and cut the flaps in my cornea. Painful isn't really the right word, but it was uncomfortable as all get out. They put this suction cup thing on your eye and create a vacuum seal and then start cutting. It was blindingly awful. It was so hard to keep my eyes open, and the even had me in this Clockwork Orange contraption so I couldn't shut my eyes. Still, I would've given anything to close them. It was like my brain shut off and the only thought I had was get-it-off get-it-off get-it-off. They did my left eye first, prounounced it a success, and did the right eye. But no pronouncement after that one.

Then they walk me across the hall and put me under another machine. I hear lots of commotion from the doctor and nurses and get the vibe that something is wrong. Panic attack. I am trying not to freak out or cry for what feels like an eternity before some nurse pats me on the arm and assures me that there's nothing wrong with my eyes, just the machine. Turns out the machine was having trouble uploading my info, so someone had to go back downstairs and save my flie to a thumb drive and come back with it. But I seriously thought something had gone horribly wrong. It was entirely unnerving, lying there for interminable minutes thinking that I had just lost my right eye.

Then, by the time they came back with the thumb drive, I had been lying there with my eyes closed for several minutes. So when they turned on the machine and the light flooded my eye, I thought I was going to pass out it was so bright. Nothing like being in complete darkness for five minutes and then having a flashlight shined in your eye from six inches away.

The wild thing about this next part is that it's done on camera and broadcast into the waiting room, so my friend and her son watched them pull back the flap in my cornea, pulse the laser into it, and then replace the flap. She took pictures with her cell phone, heh. And then we were done.

I shut my eyes, got guided out of the office, into the car, into my house, and into bed. My friend then had to figure out how to tape the protective eyewear to my head before I went to sleep. I woke up three hours later and took the goggles off.

I can see...decently. I guess I was expecting this life-altering transformation already, but as of right now I see better than I did naturally but not nearly as good as I did with my glasses. They say the process can take up to 48 hours to really work, so I'm hoping I have better vision in the morning.

Oh, and I would never say the process was easy or painless, but whatever discomfort I experienced -- I spent a lot of the time with my toes curled and my fists clenched, wishing I could be anywhere but with a blinding light in my eyeball -- it will be worth one hour of discomfort if I can see. My eyes are still extremely itchy this evening, maddeningly so. I would give anything to rub them, but that's the biggest no-no. I hope the worst of that goes away by tomorrow.

Wish me luck that I wake up in the morning with better vision.

UPDATE:

As posted above...

If you're really squeamish, this might freak you out. But there's a youtube of a Lasik surgery, and it's exactly what they did to me. I must say, sitting in the waiting room watching these creeped me out at first, but after I'd watched three people go ahead of me, it wasn't that hard to watch. But still...not for those who get grossed out by eyeballs.

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July 22, 2008

A SLEEPOVER

Charlie and I will be gone for a few days; we're going on a sleepover to my friend's house. Her husband is out of town this week, so we're going to knit and bake. And then she'll nurse my eyes back to sight. So I may not be around for a few days, but hopefully when I return I'll be 20/20.

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July 21, 2008

BWAHAHA

So...during primary season, my husband opted for strategery and pulled a Mary Katherine Ham. Therefore, I found it hilarious today that he received a letter in the mail from the RNC asking him why he's abandoned the Republican Party. It called him a "grassroots leader." I am seriously sniggering here.

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July 20, 2008

SPEAK FOR YOURSELF

There's just too much to say about this article, and most of what I want to say will make me sound mean. I'll limit myself to a few points: As wars lengthen, toll on military families mounts

If the burden sounds heavier than what families bore in the longest wars of the 20th century — World War II and Vietnam — that's because it is, at least in some ways. What makes today's wars distinctive is the deployment pattern — two, three, sometimes four overseas stints of 12 or 15 months. In the past, that kind of schedule was virtually unheard of.

Honestly, I'd rather my husband do all the time he's done in Iraq than do one tour in either WWII or Vietnam. I can't help but think of Easy Company from Band of Brothers. They were only deployed for a year, but that year included D-Day, Market Garden, and Bastogne. No way. I'll take two years in Iraq over that one year in Europe anyday.

"Infidelity is huge on both sides — a wife is lonely, she looks for attention and finds it easier to cheat," she said. "It does make even the most sound marriages second-guess."

Um, no it doesn't. Speak for yourself, honey.

"Deployments don't help in strengthening a marriage, but they do not have to kill marriages," [Col. Ronald Crews, one of several chaplains called from the reserves to help with family counseling] said. "That's a choice a couple has to make."

Again, speak for yourself, Chaplain. I know a few wives who've said that deployment strengthened their relationship; CVG even called deployment "couples therapy." I really disagree that separation can't strengthen you.

When my husband left, I posted "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" on my site. To me, that is the perfect deployment poem. My husband is the roaming foot of the compass, and I the fixed foot that hearkens after him. Our love is the "gold to aery thinness beat" and we don't need "eyes, lips, and hands" to remind us that we're still in love. And our relationship is just as strong, even though deployment "doth remove those things which elemented it."

I don't need my husband in my house to know that I love him. I also don't need him here to know that I oughtn't cheat on him, or to strengthen the bond that exists between us.

But then again, we don't have "dull sublunary lovers' love."

[article via LMT]

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A PECK OF PEPPERS

I've never grown anything edible before, so I am fascinated by my new little garden. I go out and look at it constantly, mostly to marvel but also to be on the lookout for hornworms!

So I was tickled pink to come home from DC and find that my little buds and marble-sized peppers had turned into this:

peppersgreen.jpg

Four on one little plant! How is it standing under all that weight? And the little pepper that I took a photo of a month ago?

pepperred.jpg

He's red! He's still only the size of a golfball though. But this farmer thing is addictive.

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July 19, 2008

MY ALTERNATE REALITY

The Girl and I have a running motivational speech, wherein we admonish each other not to live in an alternate reality. Hers is that if her husband hadn't deployed and gotten stop-moved, she would be back in the US now instead of still languishing in Germany. Mine is that I would already have a baby instead of still being in not-able-to-be-pregnant hell. We have to constantly remind each other that, even though we don't like it, we have to live in the reality that is.

But this is hard for me today, because my husband just found out his next deployment schedule. He still has six months left on this one, and he already knows tentative dates for the next one. And I can't help but be overwhelmingly disappointed that this baby we were pregnant with a month ago would've worked out so perfectly. Baby would've been born right after the husband got back, and he would've been here for the birth and then maximized his time at home before he left again. Now that we already know when he's leaving again, it's like another sock in the gut that I wish this baby had worked out.

I am still planning on getting fertility testing done, and perhaps heading into Mordor this fall. But if things go perfectly well, and I get pregnant on my own in a doctor's office right away, the baby will be born right as my husband is deploying again. That is not a reality I care to live in. In fact, that was the exact reason that we started trying to have a baby when we did, so we could avoid such a crappy situation. But there it is. Perfect Baby is no longer with us, and now we get Undesirably Timed Baby. That is, if Baby even works out for us at all.

I promise you, The Girl, that I am trying really hard not to dwell on that alternate reality, where my husband actually gets to enjoy the birth and early life of his child. And I swear, I was doing really well and was practically over the fact that I am not pregnant anymore. I was moving on, but this is something that makes me wistful for the alternate reality I almost had.

However, I take some vicarious comfort in this: no matter how we slice it, you will be back living in the US before any sort of baby enters our home! And that is something to definitely look forward to.

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CUTE

Yay, CaliValleyGirl finally graced us with her presence, and she even included a picture of her baby wearing the sweater I made for him. Um, the sweater that was supposed to fit him this coming winter, at six months, not six weeks. He's a big'un.

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LINK

Via Beth, a must read: Patton Oswalt's graduation speech

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OH HEAVENS

Dear AirForceGuy,

You know how you were ashamed that my Tibetan terrier kicked your pit bull's butt? I have a piece of news you'll be interested in. Remember how Charlie kept scratching his ears the whole week? We went to the vet yesterday: he has a yeast infection in his ears.

Trust me, our dogs are equally emasculated.

charlierug.jpg

Poor Charlie, that's just not cool at all.

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SLEEP

One of the bad things about having a deployed husband and no job is that I don't have to do anything. Time is just one big fluid thing, and the distinction between separate days becomes arbitrary.

I have always been an insomniac, but having a husband with a set schedule helps keep me on a system. Now that he's gone, there's no reason to go get in bed. I end up promising myself 'just one more episode' or 'just one more chapter.' My bedtime creeps ever so later: 1AM, 2AM. Same with when I get out of bed; if there's no job to go to, and I stayed up until 2AM, why not sleep until 9:00? It's a bad cycle.

But last night, I found myself exhausted. I felt like I was drugged, I was so tired. Maybe it was the midnight drive home from DC catching up to me, I don't know. But I shut the lights out last night at 8:45, before it was even dark outside. And I woke up this morning at 7:45. That's a heck of a slumber.

Oh, and trust me, I am enjoying it while it lasts. There's my silver lining to not having kids yet; I can sleep for 11 hours if I need to.

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July 18, 2008

DERP

The husband sent me a good link today, under the simple email subject line of "Krauthammer rules": Who Does Obama Think He Is?

Incidentally, I watched North By Northwest last night -- such a good movie and can I point out how Cary Grant makes me melt? -- and I had a good chuckle when I remembered Obama's bonehead question of how they had filmed the movie on top of Mount Rushmore. I hope he hadn't seen that movie in a long time, because the Rushmore they used was comically fake-looking. It is entirely obvious it wasn't the real deal.

But hey, at least Obama didn't ask to see the entrance where Nicolas Cage found the city of gold.

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July 17, 2008

I'M HOME

Thomas Sowell is so smart.

One of the most naive notions is that politicians are trying to solve the country's problems, just because they say so-- or say so loudly or inspiringly.

Politicians' top priority is to solve their own problem, which is how to get elected and then re-elected. Barack Obama is a politician through and through, even though pretending that he is not is his special strategy to get elected.
[...]
Perhaps a defining moment in showing Senator Obama's priorities was his declaring, in answer to a question from Charles Gibson, that he was for raising the capital gains tax rate. When Gibson reminded him of the well-documented fact that lower tax rates on capital gains had produced more actual revenue collected from that tax than the higher tax rates had, Obama was unmoved.

The question of how to raise more revenue may be the economic issue but the political issue is whether socking it to "the rich" in the name of "fairness" gains more votes.

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July 15, 2008

QUOTE

Ralph Peters on "the audacity of hope":

Audacity is for innovators, risk-takers and crusaders - for those willing to stand in the fire of public opinion and tell a million people they're wrong and here's why. Audacity's not for the passive mob hoping government will fix everything (while blaming government for everything).

Hope is the opposite of audacity. It's passive, an excuse for inaction.

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July 14, 2008

LOVELY VACATION

My time at Heather's house was so nice; we just sat and crocheted together for three days. I joked to her husband that we were going to get bedsores! It was so relaxing and nice to just talk. And her husband used to be Civil Affairs, so we compared notes.

I'm here at AirForceHouse now. There was an "incident" tonight: Charlie was wrestling with their dog and their dog's foot got caught and it ripped his toenail completely out by the root. Ouch! AirForceGuy is mortified that our Tibetan terrier managed to take down his pit bull. Heh.

More later.

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July 11, 2008

NO PRIZES FOR ME

I don't feel so great today. Unsettled, disappointed, depressed. Getting lasik surgery was supposed to be my consolation prize for losing the baby; now it looks like I don't get First Place or the consolation prize. No prizes for me. No silver lining, no green grass, no happy ending. They told me to come back in a week and they'll re-run the eye tests to be certain.

Thank goodness I already had something good planned for this week.

I leave tomorrow to go visit friends. My first stop is Heather, the recipient of all those squares I've been crocheting. We will have a nice couple of days of pure crafting, and I can have some precious company while I get some more work done on my afghans. My next stop is AirForceFamily. AirForceGuy has even arranged a Top Secret excursion, something that even required some sort of security clearance. I am so curious to see what it is. (And so is my husband, apparently!)

You know, I was supposed to take this trip in May, but a dead baby threw a monkey wrench in it. I am really glad that I happened to reschedule for right now, because I could use the distraction and the joy in my life.

Today will go down as a really bad day in my life: the day I felt extra salt in my wounds. But if this is the worst day I ever have to face, then I will have lived a very good life.

It just sucks today.
But my vacation will help boost my spirits.

And I'm taking the laptop, so I hope to stick around the 'sphere...


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TEH FUNNY

Well, this cheers me up today. I clicked on Instapundit and my heart literally skipped a beat when I saw that Mark Steyn was hosting the Rush Limbaugh show today. I ran to the radio.

Also, this sent me into fits too.

I am not what you would call outdoorsy. If I wanted anything that was outdoors, I'd hire someone to bring it inside where civilization lives. [...]

Anyway, on my recent trip to Branson, we were staying at a hotel with both an indoor and an outdoor pool and spa. You already know which one I used. As I sat in the hot tub, inside the air conditioned building, I realized I was a full two layers away from nature, and I liked it. The air conditioning protected me from the heat outside, and the warm water of the hot tub protected me from the air conditioning. In time, the hot tub became too hot, and I wished I had some sort of thermos suit I could wear to take the edge off.

UPDATE:

I guess I ought to specify: they were fits of laughter. Maybe I have a weird sense of humor, but I thought that was darned funny. Take that, Al Gore.

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TOO MUCH REJECTION

I can't carry a baby.
And my corneas are too thin for lasik.
I hate my body.

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July 10, 2008

I STILL HEART VARIFRANK (I JUST HAD FORGOTTEN HOW MUCH)

When I first started blogging, I read every single blog on my blogroll every single day. I was fastidious. Nowadays, I am so blog-scatterbrained; I don't think there's one blog I read every day. Thus I haven't read Varifrank in a while, so forgive me that these links are old.

I wasn't the biggest fan in the world of There Will Be Blood, but God how I love that "I drink your milkshake" line. I love how you can use it now and it sums up a whole concept in one little silly line. I just get tickled pink every time I see it. (Not to mention that you can also explain the concept using the names J.R. Ewing and Monty Burns.)

Varifrank, from a month ago: Canada to US: I Drink Your Milkshake! And you know exactly what the post will be about. I just love that line.

(Of course, my very favorite use of There Will Be Blood is this blog post from iSteve. Oh my, that was clever. I mean, that deserves an award or something.)

Oh, and Varifrank wrote a doozie two weeks ago when Wesley Clark opened his yapper. Priceless.

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