Because It's Sunday!

Who doesn't like to go back in time and remember what you were like as a lil' one?! Well, head over to A Complete Waste of Make Up and Link up to  share what you were like.

1. What do you miss most about being a kid?
I miss the sense of adventure. When I was little, I was basically fearless.  At the age of 4 and 5 I would wander off at the barn my dad worked at and be gone for hours. What was I doing? Splashing in a creek, swinging on a tire swing, jumped around on hay bales. If it looked kinda fun, I did it. Now, I think through all the consequences, do a pros & cons list, then thing. WWJD? (okay, that last part was a joke...)

2. Did you have a nickname growing up? What was it?
All my life, my parent, especially my daddy have called me Katie Girl. I love it and I hope that they call me that all my life.

3. What was your favorite thing to do at recess?

When I was in 1st-4th grade, I was really into the playground, playing pretend (i.e. house, stranded on dessert island, teacher etc.) but as I got a little older I like to play games like four square and basketball.

4. What did you want to be when you grew up?
I always wanted to be a teacher or an "Army Guy" For as long as I can remember, those were the two things that I wanted. No one knew that I wanted to be an "Army Guy" until my senior year in high school when I actually joined and followed my life long dream. And I might still be a teacher...

5. What was your favorite toy?

I really didn't play with a lot of toys. I had a cap gun that I really liked. And I always enjoyed playing Hotwheels, but what it came down to, was that when my parents got me some awesome toy, I usually had fun with it for like a week before I went back to spalshing in the creek or doing something that involved more imagination that toys.

6. What is the funniest thing you did as a kid that your parents still remind you about?

I was obsessed with tape, glue, and sciscors. I loved to cut stuff up, tape together toilet paper tubes and glue together anything that looked like it should go together. My mom washed some of my sheets a few different times to discover that I had cut a 100 little cuts into them. Lucky her, right? I also used big words apparently? I don't really know what my family means by that, but I was correcting them on their grammar by the age of like...7. Sad, I know

I'm the one in the chair. I still sit with my feet up like that...My mom gets so mad because I do it at the dinner table.

I was 3 years old in this picture (right) I remember getting dressed for this day and feeling like a lil' clown. I thought I was so cute.

I was a regular Picasso, no? Both of my sisters have pictures just like this one, and their teachers helped them. So there's are awesome and I have a lumpy face and crazy ears...(confession? I still draw about this well...)

1st grade...I was sooo proud of those missing teeth and was so excited to get my school picture taken without them. Check out my ears! They still stick out like that...

Country Music

Currently, I have this obsession with Pandora Internet radio. Along with that, I like to take screen shots of my favorite songs...so in my iPhone camera roll it's mostly screen shots of a million different songs.

I feel a need to do something with them, so here I go :)

Basically, every night before I go to bed, I turn on Pandora, plug in my headphones and cruise Facebook. Or sometimes it's when I'm getting ready for work or for my day or whatever. When something good comes on, I click the home button, rush to Pandora, X out the ad and *BAM* screen shot that. And sometimes I'm dumb like on the Jamey Johnson one and just screen shot the lockscreen...oh well.

Currently, I'm listening to "Eric Church Radio" and these are the lovely songs that I have just loved so much that I had to screenshot them.

Typically, they are songs that I relate to. Ones that when I hear them, I get all weepy and emotional or I get goose bumps or basically just have some kind of response to. So this is what I've got

Jamey Johnson "In Color"

Kenny Chesney "She's Got It All"

Nitty Gritty Dirt Band "Fishin' In The Dark" (I would consider this one mine and J's song...)

Brad Paisley "Mud On the Tires"

Josh Turner "Time Is Love" (This song is new and I loooove it)

Lee Brice "A Woman Like You"

Jason Aldean "Dirt Road Anthem"

Eric Church "Springsteen" (recently, I downloaded this song and I have been listening to it on repeat for the past...like week or so. And I still get excited when it comes on the radio...)

So there you have it. I'm officially crazy for country music...I've always loved it, but this is a whole new kind of obsession for me. (and this isn't even all the screen shots I took...)

It's My Birthday!

I am so behind on my blogging. I'll be doing "What I Learned At Work Today"on Wednesday and updating you on my life...right about now.

So since my trip to 29 I've been working a ton of weird hours. In order to get time off you have to just trade shifts around and try to make something work for you. So I ended up working all weekend. Totally lame. But luckily, I've been passing my tests with high scores and earned the priveledge to watch videos between calls. It makes the time pass quite a lot faster. So My 10 hour work day Saturday wasn't as horrible as it would have been otherwise.
In other news, I've been doing a ton of wedding planning. It makes me really excited for the future. We bought one bridesmaid dress and we're doing more of that shopping later as well. I've got most of the stuff for my center pieces and I plan on getting to work on them very soon.  I'll post some pictures when I gt one completed :)

And for the most exciting part, today is my birthday.  I'm 19 today. I have been in a pretty bad mood all weekend. My family went out of town for a yearly vacation I couldn't go on because of my crazy working weekend, and I've just wanted to get some stuff done around my house, but it has just been impossible with my work schedule.
Luckily, I got home around 9:30 last night and had a little bit of time to take care of the dishes (just a little side note, why on earth would you run the diswasher when it only has like five spoons in the silverware thing?! There were plenty more forks and knives to be washed...ugh if you do chores, do them right) After that, I made some slightly bunrt popcorn and watched One Tree Hill on Netflix and tried to forget how lonely I was.
It's strange because I usually really like to be alone. It's nice for me to just have time to myself to reflect on my life and contemplate cleaning my disasterousy messy room ( I never actually clean it...just contemplate it.) but because it's my birthday today and everyone was gone all weekend (and today :( ) I just wasn't so happy to be alone. It mostly just makes me miss J and want to be with him even more than I already do.

But other than my pouty, moodiness, I have been thinking about all of the really great birthdays that I have had in the past.

I think that the most memorable ones involve balloons.
When I was in...oh I can't remember maybe 5th or 6th grade? my family had a huge bunch of helium balloons in my room when I woke up. It was a small gesture but it just started my day off so great. I remember how happy I felt to see them there when I got up. It was really an awesome feeling, especially because I never expect anything particularly grand on my birthday so I'm always surprised when something cool happens.

When I turned 13, my sister threw me a surprise party. That was...awesome. I had no idea what was going on...My dad took me door knob shopping to keep me busy while they were setting up and waiting for guest to arrive. Good one dad...When I walked in the room the there was huge group of my friends and family sitting there in a sea of balloons and I was completely shocked...I guess the doorknob shoping wasn't enough to give it away.

But I think the best birthday yet, was my 16th birthday. I had always wanted to have flowers delivered to me at school and I had made comments about in the past, so I always wondered if I might just so happen to get some flowers this birhtday. Well, I was sitting in 4th period (Last class of the day) and I had given up on the flowers. I knew it wouldn't happen. So I was sitting there reading whatever dumb book the teacher was making us read when I heard someone come in and the teacher announced to the class that they could put away their things and said something about having a special something or other...

I turned in my seat to see what she was talking about and there were my Grandma and sister with the big candy cake, balloons, and a big bouquet of beautiful gerber daises. I almost cried I was so happy. But instead of actually crying I just got REALLY embarrassed and turned bright red as my class sang happy birthday to me.
It was truly the most amazing thing anyone had done for me. It might seem silly, but for some reason or another, I feel like the forgotten child. And I'm totally not forgotten, but I'm the middle. Sometimes I get lost in the mix, But I that day, I felt so special. And people approached me in the halls about it for the rest of the month and told me how cool it was that my family did that for me.  I was soo grateful for them.
That was so awesome. And now, we get a little "Happy birthday" on FB, a text message, and if you're lucky, a phone call...I guess things have changed a little.
Well, I'd better get to work...

Until next time. :)

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.