What I Learned At Work Today [WEEK 1]

Welcome to my Weekly post, "What I Learned At Work Today"! (I was supposed to post this yesterday, but I ran out of time at work!  This will be a Sunday post after this!) If it looks like that photograph was taken on the floor of the the handicap stall in the bathroom, it wasn't... (okay, it was...) We're not allowed to have cell phones on the call floor in any way shape or form, including camera-form, so I had to do something! Don't worry, I threw that paper away.  I decided that due to the fact that we are fairly slow on Sundays and I tend to learn very interesting things while I'm at work, I would share with the blog-world.  Sometimes the things I learn are from Pinterest, sometimes they are from blogs (okay...via Pinterest most of the time...) and sometimes, I'm just awesome and I learn things for myself from my experiences or from the things that hear while on calls all day. Not all of my "What I Learned At Work Today" posts will be long and they won't all explain what this is, but I thought you might like a little bit of background behind the idea. I will do my best to credit everyone that I learn things from if it's possible!

Today, I leared a couple of things.  First I learned that...

Saving money starts in the kitchen!

     Because I'm about to become a Military Spouse, I know that I'm going to have to be good at handling our money. (Heaven knows J won't be the one doing that! He can't resist a good looking jacket...) It's not unlikely that if we're stationed somewhere that doesn't have a big city around for 50+ miles, I won't be able to find a job, so we're going to be living off of BAH (if we're off base) and his Lcpl. income... Having read a lot of Military Spouse blogs (and a lot of mommy blogs and couponing blogs and blogs where their money is kinda tight) I have noticed that the place everyone starts is the kitchen.

    Food is something that we use up, then just have to buy more. It's like...laundry. It never ends. You simply have to do it every week or else it piles up and then...you have to go out naked. Not a good situation. Well if you don't do something about food, you starve!  And we cannot have that!  So, what do we do? We learn ways to make our dollar go further when it comes to what we put in our bellies. So far, this is what I've got.

1. Couponing is very smart. You can read more about what I already know about couponing in my post, Couponing: Simplified.
2. Freeze stuff. I learned all about what you can freeze and how to freeze it here at Simple Organized Living. The cool thing about these types of sites is that other people comment with the things that they freeze and how to freeze them. This is cool because that way, you can buy in bulk when things are at rock-bottom prices and freeze it...if it's feezable that is. Which is where the list comes in!
3. Meal Plan!  This didn't really come from anywhere specific. A lot of people say it's a good idea.  It saves moneys because you can shop with a very specific list and you won't end up spending money on things that you don't need.
4. Don't buy prepared meals (TV dinners, boxed dinners, etc.) They are more expensive and there are a lot of things that you can cook yourself that will taste even better than the prepared meal.
5. Get a really extensive recipe book or create a recipe repetoire online. Having the tools to cook at home make it so you don' tjust decide to go out which will end up costing you a lot more money than monthly grocery shopping!

If I didn't credit someone, I decided that on my own. If I did, click the link. You can learn something today too!

Next, I learned that...

Computer animation is the Coke Zero of movies

You must be thinking...Whaaa?? Well, I have two sister that are diabetic and I drank diet soda most of my childhood (we're soda drinkers...I have a coke, like, every morning...don't judge, I'm tryna quit.) That means that when I started drinking regular Coke, it was like I had see the light...I realized what I had been missing all these years and it brought joy to my life knowing there was real sugar in my pop. Anyway...Later in my life, they came out with Coke Zero. I thought, "Hey, maybe I'll start drinking that. Zero Calories, Zero sugar, still tatest good...That's awesome." Well after one sip I was disgusted. It was sooo close to tasting just like Coke, but it didn't. It wasn't even like it was an off-brand like Shasta or something, it was just...still not that good old, coke in a red can taste. Needless to day, I didn't make the switch.

Anyway...Today, I was eating my Wendy's salad in the break room and a movie was on. I think it was Tin Tin? Honestly, I'm not really sure. But I couldn't really tell if it was animated or live-action. I had to ask the kid sitting on the couch. Now, computer animation is pretty cool. I love Pixar movies. Up! is truly a modern classic...But isn't the whole point of animation that it's not supposed to look real?  It was frustrating because it was so close to looking live-action, but it wasn't.  Do you understand the connection? Good :)



Broken

Today's post is about October 16, 2011, the day all of my dreams were crushed. I explained it a little bit, but I didn't really give you a good idea of what happened. so here it is. All the gorey details (plus pictures!)

 

I went for a bike ride with one of my friends from the DEP. I didn't know that we were going mountian biking and I didn't bring my helmet, but I grew some confidence when I saw a lot of little kids coming up from the trail without helmets and their bikes. So, I hopped on my bike and headed down the trail. I had never mountain biked before, so imediately, it felt like a little too much. I took my feet off the pedals and started to walk myself down this first hill.

Right about now is where things go foggy. I'm not sure when I decided to take my feet off the ground and put them on the pedals, but apparently, I did. All I can really remember from this moment, was seeing a cement landing thing ahead of me and then...nothing. I remember the impact of the fall a little bit, but I don't even know how I fell or what happened. The friend I was riding with was ahead of me and looked back when he heard something strange behind him and found me unconsious in a bush. Apparently, the first thing I said was "Sgt. Oz is going to kill you."  That was our recruiter. That was when the concussion set in. I remember hearing voices and wondering what was going on.

I kept saying "I don't remember things. I don't remember things." and  "What day is it? Why aren't I in boot camp? Has J written me a any letters?"

I have now calculated that I didn't remember the last 3 weeks. J had been gone that long and I had gotten a letter 2 weeks before. Basically, I only remembered that Jake was gone. I think that was the scariest part. Not having a clue where you are or what has happened for the past few weeks is a very confusing thing.

I remember looking down at my arm and seeing it all deformed and telling the people around me not to call an ambulance (I was too worried about how much it would cost. My dad had a heart attack a few weeks before and I remember my mom saying how expensive the ambulance ride was even with insurance.) But of course, they had to call an ambulance.

I got the hospital and my by then my family had been called and they knew what was up. Finally, several hours later (I believe it was dark out and the ride was in the morning) I came to and was coherent. I had a neck brace on and my arm hurt REAL bad. My mom explained it all to me and said that I was going to need surgery.

They put in a metal plate at 9 screws to hold all the crazy fractures together. When I got it taken out, they asked me if I wanted to keep it. Althought it brings back bad memories, I wanted to see what was inside there. I had shattered my radial head, (also known as the olecranon.  Learned that one today in my research!)

and fractured a whole section of my raidus on my left arm.

So they sliced me open and put in all that stuff. The picture with the stitches is actually from when they took out all the metal in my arm in January, but it looks pretty close to the same. Except when I hurt it initially it was much more swollen and bruised. It was black and blue and very very painful. I didn't let anyone take pictures when it happened initially, so I don't have any, but just picture really bad and real ugly and you get it... I also had scrapes and bruises on my forehead and hips and knees and hands. It was a bad situation.

 I went through several months of physical therapy and now I have full range of motion and mostly all my strength back.  Physical therapy was not fun. It hurt a lot. The first day I went, I couldn't make a fist or even touch my fingers to my palm. I was in bad shape and when I was finished with it that day, I went home and cried over how helpless I felt. I did a lot of crying throughout those days. But I felt like I still had hope because they were going to take out all the dreadful metal and I would be able to go and be a Marine. Once I started to make progress, I was feeling really hopeful. I started going to DEP PT and pool functions (Stupid activities that the recruiting office makes you do) and I definitely thought that I was going to get my shot at being a Marine.  It seemed like now that I could extend my arm, the whole world stopped sucking all at once.

Well, some time passed. I surprised J as his graduation and we got engaged on Christmas and things didn't seem so bad. J left and then I got my surgery to take the metal out of my arm. The pictures to the left are of my scar today.  It is fading nicely and I barely notice it except for when I bump it really hard or it gets really itchy. But, the Marines don't care. I got discharged in February (or was it March?)  and now I'm really feeling lost.

I didn't have a back-up plan. I didn't need one. And now, I'm stuck in this dead end job working only 28 hours a week and just begging for something exciting to happen to shake up my week. I feel like I have my whole life ahead of me, but what is all that time with out a plan or a purpose?

So this is what I've come up with. 

The things I know:

1. I'm getting married to the love of my life...eventually.
2. I don't really like my job but it pays too well to complain.
3. J is getting deployed  next yearish and I'm going to be extremely without him for 7 months.
4. I'm lost.

The things I don't know:

1. Everything else.

29 Stumps

I don't have pictures becasue I suck.

I now understand why they call it 29 Stumps.
After getting off I-15  just after Primm and driving for 2 hours through the desert, we reached 29 Palms. As we began to get closer my sister starts to freak out. She's driving and saying things like, "Katie, you did see pictures of our hotel online, right? I mean this place isn't a crack hotel is it?"  Or there was this one before we were even close to our destination:  "I bet that we're just going to suddenly just go into a new dimension and we'll finally be in this dumb place."

And once we could actually see the "city" she started saying how she is pretty sure that we were in hell. Literally we just crossed dimensions into hell. She was freaking out and saying, "Is there going to be somewhere to eat? What if there's no food?!"
Of course food was her first concern.

Well, we got checked into our room and then headed to base to pick up my boy.  When I saw him, I think I almost fainted. I was so happy. I gave him a big hug and a kiss and I just looked at him for a second completely in love all over again and it was fantastic.

He went to get his stuff and grabbed his friend (The friend was to keep my sister busy while we had time alone ;)) and we headed off base and back to our room.

I wish that I could tell you all about how much fun this trip was, but honestly, there is NOTHING to do in 29 Palms, we swam in the hotel next to ours' pool and hung out in our air conditioned hotel room. We ate some food in the various popular restraunt around the area (Denny's, MickyDs, Mexican restaurant with a name that escapes me, BK), but honestly, I had a great time. When you're apart for so long, you just get used to missing the person you're away from, it's as if you just start to not feel the missing any more because it's a normal feeling. But when I saw him, it all came back at once how much I had missed him.
And lucky me, because my sister actually kinda hit it off withe J's friends (their names are the same actually...it got really confusing!) We're going back!
I get to return to my Marine again next week. And I already got work off and everything! I'm so excited. Even more so this time because I know what to expect and we'll be better prepared for the little amount of time that we get to spend together.

In other news, J told me yesterday that it's looking like their until won't be deploying until after the new year. That makes me very happy. I told him that I like that timeline much better than deploying this year. That means he might be home for Christmas! And we could possibly find time to get married when it's not on pre-depolyment leave : P I do not want to do that. I think it'd be a good idea because it's going to set us up financially for our future becasue until he comes back from deployment I will be living at home and getting his BAH for where I live. But I'll also have my own job and won't have much for living expenses so we can just save all that money and have quite a lot saved when he comes home and it's time for us to think about getting us a place to live and get all settled down, but I don't want to send my brand new husband off to war after being married for a week. Not cool. But, I guess I just need to get used to the reality of our situtation.

On the bright side, if his unit gets disbannded after this deployment, I might NEVER have to live in 29 Stumps!

591 Miles

You see this little map here? Tomorrow morning, I am embarking on this journey!  After all my complaining and being sad about wanting to see J, I get to go and see him!  We are both so excited we can hardly stand it. After four months of waiting and not knowing what even the next week would mean for us, we finally get to stand face to face. I have not been a very good blogger for the past few days due to the fact that I've been so busy trying to get shift trades at work, and that's where I typically do all my blogging. So for that I apologize, but I just thought I would share with you my exciting news. 

When I return, I will provide a long picture-filled post about how much fun we had together. I promise. The only down-side of this whole situation, is the fact that we basically only get to have one full day together. It's definitely not enough time, but certainly one full day together is far better than no days together at all. 

Hopefully we will have a safe trip and a good time!  

Ugh

Last night and today are the first days since J left for MCT that I have cried over missing him. Of course I miss him. And I've cried over many thing, but these past couple of days have been extra difficult.

I've been trying to plan a trip to go see him, but although I'm an adult and I have my own job and my own bills and responsibilities, I'm not "allowed" to go down to see J by myself. Not only that, I drive a 76 Ford Maverick. Not exactly and ideal travelling car. So I have to rely on someone else to take me down to see him because I'm not old enough to rent a car and I haven't ever driven a long distance by myself.

I was hoping to go down with his sister so that we could do some engagement pictures. I haven't known J very long, so we have about a total of...5 maybe 6 pictures together and most of them are too silly or not all that cute. Basically not appropriate to use for wedding invitations or anything like that. But she can't. So now, we won't have any pictures of us together for a guest book, or to decorate at our wedding or for our invitations...And then when I asked his mom if she could go when I was planning, she couldn't either.

And even if they could go, it wouldn't be the same...I just want to spend time with him by myself and it just isn't a possibility. Being young sucks. So bad. I am feeling being away from him more than every becuase I just can't get help to go and see him...I hate it so much.

But it's what I signed up for. Right?

Couponing: Simplified

I had quite the adventure in the coupon-clipping world on Monday after work. I picked up the Sunday Coupons from my grandpa's house and I took them home and I set up shop on my living room floor (Hence the rug as the background for all my photos).  I've been reading this book that my mom got me for Easter called Savvy Saving by Melissa Jennings and Shelley King. They are the creators of the website Stockpiling Moms.  From this website, I've been learning the basics of how to coupon. Pretty much, I'm just cutting randomly and hoping I'm going to use what I clipped...You would be surprised how long it took to clip all those things.

From the book and from the experience I now have this is what I know about couponing:

1.  Using coupons is the smartest when the prices are already low. You want to get everything you buy at what the Moms (That's how I'm going to reference that book from now on!) call "rockbottom prices".

2. Even if it might be the more expensive brand, if it's the brand you always use, you might as well clip it to save some money on it. (That's something I decided on my own!)

3.  If you don't need the product and you buy it because you have a coupon, you're not actually saving any money.  Okay, that's kind of a "duh" sort of thing, but I want to cover everything essential to couponing that I know so far.

4.  Use regular sized scissors. It is not fun using the ones that were in your pencil box in the fourth grade.

5.  Categorize your coupons so that when you need one for something, you know where to find it. Along with this, use something to oraganize like a book or a binder or something like that.

6.  Plan for a lot of time. It's not a quick thing. Not to mention the fact that you have to clean up the mess you make. (I made a big big mess...But that just kinda comes with me. I make messes when I do pretty much anything involving paper and scissors)

7.  There is a lot more to couponing than you think. the Moms reccomend creating a price book that shows the trends in prices of the products you typically buy. That way you know for certain when a product is at it's "rockbottom price"

8.  Use paper clips. I came up with this on my own too. It keeps the things that are alike together and makes it a lot less messy. Especially when your crazy little dog bust in and decides to roll all over your freshley cut coupon pile.

9. Don't get distracted with other things. This is something you need to do in one whack...or else it'll just sit on the livingroom floor and your mom (or husband or boyfriend or wife or whoever you live with) will probably get mad.

10.  And last but not least take your coupons with you when you go places. You can't get savings if you don't have the coupons. Then, you won't have a million expired coupons and all your hand cramps and your dog rolling around in your pile won't go to waste!

Overall, I had a really good time clipping all these coupons and I'm so excited to start saving from them! It may seems silly, but I think that I'm just practicing for when I have my own home and I really need the savings that coupons are going to give me. But I think it's a good thing. There is no time like the present!  And this way, when I get to living all on my own and I'm expected to figure out how to get food into our bellies the best way possible, I'll already know what works best, what doesn't work at all, and to use bigger scissors so that your fingers don't cramp.

The Trouble With Boys

Right now, I'm in a tough spot.

I really need to try and set a wedding date. Neither of us want to wait until after this year to get married, but for some reason, I can't get J to say a single thing about when he wants to get married. Before, when we didn't even know where he would be stationed, he had all kinds of input, and now, I feel like I'm badgering him if I ask any questions about when he wants to get married. I know that he cares and he wants to talk about it, but it's as if I never catch him at the right time...When he's thinking about it, he doesn't tell me what's going on. It's so frustrating.

The other issue here is not just him, but becasuse I'm marrying the Marine Corps, I have to deal with the possibility that he can't set a date. I want to just try. Maybe send out a save the month even...I just don't want to cut it too close to where our guests are annoyed that they didn't have enough notice. Espeically our out of town guests. And I'm sure that we will have a few of those. It's so troubling.

On top of all this, there's the distance. Being away from him is so hard. I think I said this another time but we have been apart now for around 100 days. And we have been together for less than half of our relationship and it's starting to take a toll on me.  It's not that I don't trust him, becuase I do. I 100% know that he loves me and would never cheat on me. But it's hard to not be able to talk through the rough spots in person...It's makes all those normal fights that coupls have about 10 times harder than they have to be.

I know that this is only the beginning, and it's what I signed up for, but goodenss gracious, why does it have to suck so bad?

A DI Kind of Day

Today, I took a trip to a couple of different Deseret Industries stores. Known to we Utahns as the DI. For those of you who don't know, the DI is basically a secondhand store that is run by the LDS (Mormon) Church. It is a non-profit store that takes any and all donations. They have tons of clothes, appliances, furniture, house wares and basically anything under the sun that you could thingk of. They have it.

I went with intentions to find things to decorate at my wedding with. It might sounds strange to shop at the secondhand store for something like this, but I think it's smart!  I found myself exactly what I was looking for. I didn't really intend to buy 22 Mason jars...but I did. Each jar was only $.50.  I couldn't help myself.  I gave myself some rules before I left to shop. (1) I wasn't allowed to spend more than $30.00 and (2)  If I couldn't fit it all in the box, I couldn't have it. Lucky for me, I'm really good at packing stuff into a box : D. I ended up with jars of different sizes that will look great filled with stuff and painted and all cute...I'm so excited about it!

Also, I found these wicker basket deals that you put your paper plates on so that they don't dump your food off of them. I got 10 of them for $5.00. I'd call that a good find!  I'm planning on putting the jars on the wicker plates with hot-glue after decorating the jars with different things inside and out and putting something cute on the plate. Then I'll have these adorable little hand made center pieces that won't cost me more the $30.00 to make!

I feel very accomplished with my outting and I also feel like this DIY wedding is going to be possible. I'm so excited to start making and buying more things that are going to make our wedding special.  Oh, thrifting, how I love you!

Wedding Planning

I believe that I have a blogging problem...
In my other blog (Doing what you shouldn't is half the fun) I pretty much keep things about life lessons and thing I learn about myself and the world around me, where as here, I feel like I can talk about my life in a more...specific manner. There, I keep things vague and just explain what I learned from some type of experience. So I just made a really short story long. Basically, what I'm saying is, I'm blogging for the second time today just because I want to talk more about my life.  Weird huh?

Now that we have orders and we know that J isn't going to be a million miles away, I actually feel comfortable beginning the planning of my wedding. We want to shoot for sooner rather than later, of course, but we can only do what we have the time and money for.  I've been to my share of expos. And I have a dress that just needs to be altered. And I definitely have ideas of what I want to do, but I want to do it...inexpensively (When I say that, I mean cheap, but I don't wanna sound like a redneck...)

So tomorrow, I'm going to go thrifting. I don't know if I just made that up, or if people actually say that, but I want to try and get some inspiration for things we can do to make our wedding special, but inexpensive.  My basic idea is that if we kind if do things little by little and spread out our spending, it won't feel like we're spending a lot (AND if I discover that I'm a pro thrifter, then we really won't be spending a lot).

Neither of us are made of  money, and seems how we don't want to wait forever to get married, we have no choice but to make it pretty DIY. But, I've got a crafty family and a lot of fantastic ideas due to the ever fantastical Pinterest.  I think that is going to be fun! I'll definitely post again tomorrow about how I found awesome stuff. I'll post pictures. Don't you worry.

If you happen to be reading this and you're a military spouse (or going to be one), or just happen to know stuff about weddings, and you have information that  might help make my life easier in the planning process feel free to share!

Good News

I've got some good news for you today. On Wednesday while sitting at my desk at work, I was cranking out a post about how annoying it is not knowing where J is going to be sationed and be completely in the dark as to if we're going to have to have a quickie-wedding in vegas, or a throw together one in his back yard before he flew off to Japan. Well, I guess I spoke to soon. Right before my lunch, I checked my phone and there was a text from J and a missed call. The text said,
"Hey, babe. Whens your break? we needa talk."

Of course, my heart started beating really fast and I'm so certain that he has bad news. Orders to Okinawa(We had our only controversey since we've been together over the "What if I go to Japan?" deal so that was not going to be extremely welcome news) was the first thing that popped into my head.  So I'm sitting here at my desk relaying this call (I'm a relay operator for the deaf and hard-of-hearing) just begging the person to hang up the phone so I can call J back before he has to get back to class.  I was shaking my leg and tapping my fingers on the desk as this call drags on 4 minutes longer than necessary.

The minute they ended the call I asked for my lunch break and heard back promptly and I flew out of my chair out off the call floor. I dialed the phone so fast it wasn't even funny.  To say I was nervous doesn't even come close to describing how I was feeling.

So J answers on the third or fourth ring or so and says, "What's up?"  And I roll my eyes thinking, uh...I think you know what's up. Just tell me what we need to talk about!!!  But to him I said, "Oh nothin' just walking out for lunch."
Then he throws this one at me. "Guess what?" JUST TELL ME ALREADY.
"What?"
"Just guess." He loves to play the guessing game. I do too, but not this time!
"You got your orders."
silence.
"yes. And guess where I'm going?"  I DON'T WANT TO PLAY THE GUESSING GAME!
"Where are you going?"
"Babe! Just guess!"
"No! Tell me where you're going!"
At this point, I was FREAKING out. I just wanted to know so bad. I felt like my whole life was riding on these orders.
He kinda giggles (Yeah, he giggles. I think it's cute.) and says, "I'm staying in 29 Palms."


I almost cheered aloud. But before I could celebrate, I had to ask him if he was happy about it. He said that he couldn't be happier. That he's the closest to home that he can possibly get and he can't wait to get married now because now we can just do it whenever we want.


AH! I'm so happy. I'm already hunting for a place for us to live off-base and I just have a feeling that even though it's gonna be in the desert in the middle of nowhere, at least we'll be together.
So ther you have it. Our future is almost unclouded and I think that I can kind of see just how this is going to work out. We can finally set a date for our wedding soon and I can actually start planning...
Good mood kinda week.


Oo, also, I had an interview yesterday for a promotion and I have another today...Hopefully I get one of them!

Thrifty

I, like most women these days, have an obsession with Pinterest (<-----That's my page)I'm allowed to be on it at work between calls and I pin like crazy!  Most of the time though, I don't actually do the stuff that I pin or use it. But I always think, One day, I'll be so glad I pinned this. And some times that is totally. Sometimes they're simply pipe dreams (I mean, come on, I'm never going to plan meals every sunday night and post a menu on the fridge...).


Today, my sister, my mom, and I took a stroll through The Quilted Bear (It's a store filled with home-made stuff that people sell i.e. home decor, jewelery, etc.) and there were so many cute things that I thought were so cute and I'm so sure that I could make with my brain tied behind my back. Seeing all this stuff made me think of all the crafty little things that I have seen on Pinterest and how I should be using the knowledge I've gained from it to actually do some of those things I pin and want to try sooo badly.

So, we went to Savers, The Desert Industries (The D.I.) and the overstock stores and looked around for things that we thought we could "up-cycle".  I decided on buying an old jelly roll pan that had been all burnt and used for one too many Totino's Pizzas that was completely perfect no bend or imperfections and I bought it.


J has some strange hate for fridge magnets. But I LOVE them. I think they're cute and I buy one pretty everywhere I visit. I have magnets from all over. He says that he want a stainless still fridge and NO MAGNETS. When I saw these little magnets boards I thought, Perfect! He never said anything about hating magnet board magnents! 


So I brought it home, found some fabric I had laying around (I opted for fabric because the pan was pretty beat up and I didn't think that spray painting would look as good or last as long) and I began working away. I just sorta winged it.

First, I fliped the pan over so that if I was cooking a pizza it would be all wrong and I started gluing with some fabric glue. Basically, I wrapped it like a present and I got glue EVERYWHERE. I've got some work to do on my crafting skills but this was a start and I'm so proud of my finished product!

I'm so excited to put  my own spin on other craft ideas I discover from other pinners. I'm so happy with how this turned out. :)

Hurry Up and...Wait.

One thing that I learned about the Marine Crops from day one is that everything you will ever do with them is a "Hurry-up-and-wait" type of situation.

When I joined my recruiter was so rushed. He wanted to get everything done right away (So that he could reach his quota of new recruits that month of course...but still).  I took all of a couple days to think about what I wanted and then once I decided what I wanted they tell you what all you have to do to actually become a Marine.
1. Graduate High School. 
The Marine Corps currently does not accept recruits with GEDs unless they have complete...some amount of credits (16?) in college. Some people get in after doing this, but it's typical for people to want to do this in high school when they just decided to drop out and then change your mind.

SO. If you join in high school, you HAVE to graduate. Or else you get discharged. Hurry up and get graduated...Unfortunately you can only make that go so fast, right?

2. Take (and pass) the ASVAB
(Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery)
This test is one that all Branches of the military require you take before you are allowed entry. You go to MEPS and they get you all registered and make you sit and wait. And then you take the test (it's 9 sections long!) And you aren't allowed to look at your score. You're recruiter has to open the envelope for you.
I got an 85 :) pretty proud of that.
So they rush you to take this test. Then you just have to pray you did well.

3. Clear Medical.

This picture I picked I feel is perfect. They tell you to get undress (in a timely manner of course) and then they leave the room for sometimes more than a half an hour. So you're sitting there in your underwear with your packet in a freezing cold room with any where from 1 other girl to 10 other girls while you wait to do a bunch of silly stuff mostly naked and get felt up by an old wrinkly man...I <3 the Marine Corps.



4. Pass an IST (initial strength test) and swear in.

This is by far the best part.

Okay, so we would NOT have been allowed to wear that in my recruiting office But I liked that it was a female in the picture. in both pictures actually.

You've got to do at least 44 crunches in 2 minutes and no less than a 12 second flexed arm hang

Then you get to swear in. I won't lie, this was the proudest moment of my life so far (besides watching J graduated from Boot Camp) and it kills me that I didn't get the chance to do it again. And again and again as I reenlisted time and time again...

So I hurried up and waited for this. Allll Dayyy Looong.

It was cool. But Come one. It took so long to get to this point and they were rushing us through ever step.

I'm seeing that happen now with J big time. He hurried off to MCT where he was a lucky one and picked up on time. But then after, he ended up getting stuck at Camp Pendleton doing Guard Duty for weeks. This was because his MOS school was full and they didn't have room for him in 29 Palms.
And once he got there, he spent two weeks not in class because again, he hadn't picked up yet. Again, he got lucky and he ended up in a class that picked up while people who had been there even longer are still waiting.
It's just so frustrating that they are so quick to rush our men away from us only to make the sit around around waste space that could be used for other Marines...

And now, as he is in his field radio operating school, I am anxiously awaiting the day that I get to see him again. And we're PRAYING his orders don't say Okinawa...

I guess I better get used to this hurryin' up and waiting.






By the way, I don't claim ownership of the above pictures. Just borrowed them off of google. so...yeah. not mine.

A Proposal

In an effort to catch the blogworld up on why life as an almost-militar-wife, I believe I will be posting two updates today. Yay for double blog nights!

Below is an excerpt from my proposal. I had to work that night until 7:00 pm. I was...pissed to say the least. It was Christmas and J was only going to be home for 19 days. Besides that, it was our first Christmas together. It was definitely one I wanted to spend with him.

I had spent the few days before Christmas being minorly grumpy.  Why, you ask? Well, J and just gotten done with boot camp and was spending his money like crazy...So I decided, hey, he is definitely not going to propose because there is no way on earth he had the money to buy you a ring. I had come to terms with the fact that he would leave me again and I would be ringless (I wasn't too mad about it seems how we'd  actually one been together for less than half of our nearly 6 month relationship).  But still, a girl hopes.


So finally, it get's to be 6:50 pm...and I just logged out, quit taking calls and clocked outta there a little too early. I couldn't have cared less though. My man was waiting for me.
After all the presents had been opened, one remained. I opened it up and discovered......a box of shot gun shells. Terribly confused, J reached across me and pulled a little ornament out of the tissue paper I had tossed aside and shocked me with this!

I hope that my uncle in the back ground isn't too annoying...You know how family Christmas parties can be. Listen carefully and you hear him say, "Who is this guy?" at the end of the video. HA! leave it to good old Uncle Mark to ruin the proposal video...