Sunday, March 27, 2011

I am a single wife. I married a Coastie

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When I was single I always pictured married life to consist of waking up and going to sleep next to your husband.  Dreading Mondays and so happy when Friday finally arrives and you have the weekend with your family.  Being inseparable.  A typical 9-5.  Now I anticipate every other Thursday and alternate weekends.  I feel  like at my wedding I was awarded joint custody of my husband instead of a marriage certificate.  When I got married, I technically married 1/2 of my husband and 1/2 of myself.  C is in the military and works harder than I could ever imagine working myself.  Three days at a time and on call at all hours while sleeping at the station.  I see him 15 days of every month, and half of every year.  Luckily, for now, the days are scattered and not all at once.  He has a determination I'm not sure I've ever seen before in anyone else.  A determination that definitely wasn't there when we first dated 13 years ago.  I will never fully understand what he goes through, what it's like to pull a dead body out of the water, how he manages to be so strong, or how he can consume 12 and a half pots of coffee in one day.  But he does, and it is one of the many reasons I adore him.  It is this adoration and admiration that keeps me strong through what can otherwise be described as a part-time marriage.  I will be forced to pack up my life every 4 or less years, only to repack and move again.  Most times we will have little say in where we end up and typically won't know where we are moving until mere months before. I had to give up my career and settle for short-term jobs in whatever field is hiring at the time. I have to learn to lead a life with few friends, and the ones I do meet I know I will have to say goodbye to in a few short years.  When we have children, they will have to do the same.  And I will spend much of my time raising our children alone, while C will likely miss many of their important milestones.  I have to be stronger than I ever have before.  I have to fight the urge to scream and cry when I find out he has to leave for a prolonged period of time the night before he will depart.  I have to learn how to fix a leaky faucet, a broken furnace, a clogged drain, and shovel my own driveway every snowstorm.  Because there is a 50/50 chance I will be alone when an issue arises.  Marriage in the military is a fast track lesson in how to become superwoman.  Which I hardly am, but if I was auditioning for the part, I'd be perfect.

I recently found a couple other Coast Guard and other military wives blogs. (So happy about this) It's nice to find people in the same situation as you, who can understand what this life is like, and you know you aren't alone.  It also made me feel somewhat lucky in my current situation and pretty fearful about our future.  For me, C is only gone every couple days for a few days at a time and the occasional month or two for different schooling or disaster relief. But being reminded that any one of our future stations could involve C being out on a boat for a month to a year at a time makes me want to hog tie him, super glue him to me like siamese twins and run off to Uganda.

I know the life I choose is not an easy one.  I will face challenges no married couple should have to face.  And at times I will grow to hate my husband's greedy mistress, the Coast Guard.  But the reality of it is that it makes the time we have together that much more productive.  I'm forced to find out new things about him on warp speed.  To strengthen our love to a level that matches Arnold Schwarzenegger's muscles in Conan the Barbarian.  And to learn how to adapt to just about anything life throws at me.  I'd say it's the best kind of love there is.  And if it can withstand the turbulence of this life we lead, it can withstand anything.


Friday, March 25, 2011

Lily vs Duck

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This cute defenseless baby blog goes out to my good friend Lily.  She is a professional bird caller.  Like she competes in competitions, because they have those.  I just figured there was an iphone app for this.  Alas, she goes all Merlin the Magician and secret morse codes some bird braille kinda like Helen Keller did I think.  And abracadabra birds appear.  Poor defenseless fluffy tweety birds.  This is where a normal person would bring them home to play and maybe invite to dinner or a sleepover party.  But no. Lily mass murders them and feasts on their raw meat...maybe even while they are still squawking.   BIG FAT SAD FACE!

















Tuesday, March 22, 2011

I tried to get Oprah to marry us...but she was busy so we hired Gayle instead

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tI recently looked through a few different friend's (more expensive than selling my soul to the devil) wedding pictures and started to wonder if a wedding of this caliber was really worth it.  My best friend with benefits, Google, says that the average cost of a wedding is $24,066.  If you are a 20-something new to the workforce homosapien, this is your yearly salary.  Or it is your parent's entire retirement fund-meaning in 15 years you will have 2 new roommates, a closet full of depends, and will have to fashion a homemade coffin out of your closet door, tin cans, and industrial strength bond-o.  All to celebrate 5 hours of adult prom without chaperones?  I get it if money really is growing on your sycamore tree (Tom Cruise, I'm talking to you) and you can afford to pay the hefty price tag to have Jesus himself marry you.  But for the rest of the world, is a wedding worth  $5,000 an hour?  It seems there should be better and less welfare-inducing ways to celebrate the union of two lives.  But in reality, with everyone capitalizing on this wedding frenzy, it becomes quite impossible to find reasonable ways to cut corners without having your wedding in the gymnasium of the YMCA  while the senior citizen basketball team has their weekly scrimmage.  Calling any event service (limos, flowers, catering, photographers etc) and even mention the word wedding or any other word  that starts with a w or ends in an ing and the price suddenly skyrockets by 352%.  And not to mention the cost of a wedding dress.  Even if I had upwards of $5,000 to drop on a wannabe virginal shroud, I couldn't imagine doing so.  I mean unless it came with the deed to Neverland Ranch or something...then maybe we can negotiate.  I developed a nervous twitch for weeks after having to spend $1,000 on my wedding dress. Which mind you is laying on the floor of my closet hating life because I have yet to drop $200 on a preservation kit.  Can't you just lay it between two big heavy objects to preserve it...like you do a flower in a book?  The seamstress even warned me against my idea to switch out of my 7 inch stilts heels into an amazing pair of silver sequined Jack Purcell converse I had found.  She said I would end up ripping my dress and ruin my wedding.  I think she was actually like Miss Cleo or a Wiccan and put a voodoo spell on me.  I did put on my shiny converse as planned and by the end of the night my dress had turned into stirrup pants.  If it had been 1989 I would have been really cool.

My wedding was almost entirely DIY.  I have to say this wasn't the easiest thing to do, nor the least stressful.
I did save a great deal of money, but had to contribute hours on end of my own time to try to make it resemble a wedding as much as possible.  I did all my own decorating, created my own candy buffet, my own fun station complete with costumes disguises and other goodies, I made all the bouquets by hand, boutineers, the list goes on.  Thankfully I had some great family and friends to help execute it all since I have trouble relinquishing control and really convinced myself I could do hair, makeup, get dressed, and decorate the entire venue the morning before the wedding.  Baby Jesus probably didn't bestow upon me the magical superpowers I like to think he did.  My wedding ended up being unique and tailored to C and I.  Was it perfect?  Hardly, but it made us happy and that should count for something.  In the end was my wedding any better than your $100,000 mega-super shrine of love?  Who's to judge?  Oh ya, maybe Kate Middleton.  That fancy bitch.

So for your viewing pleasure here is a few pictures of some of my DIY projects. Feel free to ask questions, or to inquire about how you too can have a Save-Your-Parent's-Retirement-Fund wedding.  Or maybe you want replicas....I charge a nominal fee.  Unless it's for a wedding, then the price doubles.
Diabetes Table

Morocco meets India..meets Burlington Vermont

Sweet boutineer action.  I think this was their Flogging Molly dance

My budget-friendly paper flower bouquet and hair piece

Fun-sized bouquet for throwing or planting in your garden

Complete with mandatory mustache on a stick and chalkboard word bubbles


Okay so maybe our make-shift guest-book/picasso piece didn't make it
to our living room wall, but it is hanging in our basement.

Mmmmm Meat


My fair maidens bouquets and hair pieces. Pros -non decaying. Cons-papercuts







Saturday, March 12, 2011

Yes Suri, It's time for your daily dose!

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Alcatraz, be warned.  Your newest inmate is gonna f*ck some shit up!  She's all..I'm about to shoot daggers of hate and Scientology in your face if I don't get extra playground privileges and a private cell.

Someone call the Pope, a warlock, and Charlie Sheen. They'll know what to do.


Take note Lindsay Lohan

Friday, March 11, 2011

A Murder of Crows is lunching on the bag of tiny organs in my lawn. I wonder what's for desert.....

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I recently came across a list for the collective names of groups of animals.  It was fascinating.  So I wanted to share my favorites.


Pod of Dolphins (oh, I see...like the thing Lady Gaga was in at the Grammys?)
Intrusion of Cockroaches (yup.) 
Bevy of deer (incredible)

Memory of Elephants (of what...I forgot?)
Flamboyance of Flamingos (created by Richard Simmons, for sure.)
Confusion of Guinea Fowl (so like a bird and a  guinea pig had sex---yup I'm confused too)
Boil of hawks (lobster? ..no, hawks. oh, okay lobster)
Bloat of hippopotamuses (Jenny Craig, you bitch)
Flock of Lice (seriously?! I really don't think a name is necessary for this.  My kid has lice. plural. period. end of story. We get it, you're dirty.  My kid has a flock of Lice!  Quarantine! Call Hazmat and get me my biohazard suit stat.)
Carload of Monkeys  (You mean a jumping bedload of monkeys?)
Parliament of Owls (let's just blame Bush)
Shrewdness of Apes (wikipedia says this is what you call a group of jews.... Click to see that I am not in fact the racist. Wikipedia is racist.)
Rhumba of Rattlesnakes (like the dance Baby has to learn in Dirty Dancing)
Unkindness of Ravens (that's just mean)
Stubbornness of Rhinoceroses (you'd be stubborn too if you weighed over 2 tons)
Run of Salmon (Ohhh I see. In that case, I'm gonna go take a swim on the treadmill. Be back.)
Escargatoire of Snails (you silly french.  so then the Chinese must call a bunch of felines, a General Tso's of Cats?)

So this is great and all, but my confusion still lies in what you call a group of Duggar babies? There is like 37 of them by now....

Saturday, March 5, 2011

I narrowly escaped with my life....thanks to Spider Spray!

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I debated all day about writing this blog because even writing about spiders make me want to put splinters in my own eyeballs.  So just to put it out there, I have a phobia  life-threatening-psychopathic-I-will-literally-die-on-the-spot-like-the-girl-in-the-ring-then-my-skin-will-melt-off-my-dead-body fear of those ghastly creatures.  So you can imagine when I read an article this morning about a recall on Mazda 6 cars due to a spider infestation, I threw my laptop across the room in fear that a giant spider of doom was going to crawl out of my computer in a twitchy slow-fast-slow motion.  Apparently, for some unknown reason, yellow sac spiders are infesting the evaporative canister vent line in Mazda6 cars.  The infestation is so extreme that Mazda has recalled over 52,000 cars.  Are you kidding me?!  Excuse me while I go drive my car off a cliff and resort to roller skating everywhere for the rest of my life.  You never know, Chrysler could be next.  And I feel I should take all necessary precautionary measures. Of course to add to the awesomeness of my day, after I got out of the shower this morning I was greeted by one of those monster-legged spiders.  It was all look at me with my long legs, I'm like Heidi Klum and I'm walking upside down on your ceiling because I defy gravity and can send you into cardiac arrest with a glance in your direction.  Not to mention I was sopping wet and lacking all necessary body armor to handle this situation.  This is how I know they are evil.  They sneak attack when you are most vulnerable like tiny ninjas. A lot of blood curdling screams took place at this point and some clawing at my own face. Somehow I managed to break down the bathroom door and hurl myself to safety before the evil Heidi Klum spider spun me up in its  fashionable web and burnt me with acid spider spit.  I suddenly remembered a few days prior when C and I were in Wal-Mart and he forcibly bought a can of Spider Killer spray.
SEE- It really does exist!

He said it was crucial for me to have in case he wasn't home to use a flame thrower on them for me.  We sat in the aisle at Wal-Mart for ten minutes while I argued with him as to why we could not buy Spider Killer spray because it had pictures of spiders on the can, and that is just NOT okay.  I lost the fight, so when we got home I made sure to bury it in the back of the closet.  Now I was left with no choice.  I closed my eyes and dug the can out of the closet and coated the bathroom ceiling with 3/4 of the can.  That should do the trick.  Of course no demonous arachnid gives up that easily.  He flailed and twitched and then lurched his dying body down at my face.  I don't remember what happened next. I must have blacked out.  My mind obviously could not conceive such extensive trauma.


I have drawn the below diagram, which I feel is a very accurate depiction of  my terrifying day which I will most likely have post traumatic stress syndrome from and require extensive and costly therapy.  

ACTUAL SIZE DIFFERENCE NOTED





Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Horrid icy things, driving to China and a case of the sads. *PLUS people with a mystery gender*

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C once told me to never watch the show Ice Road Truckers because it was only a bunch of over exaggerated drama without any fiery crashes, mangled bodies, or human ice cubes.  How is that even TV?!  Whatever, not important.

Anyways, I went out to my car the other day to leave for work only to find the Ice Gods had waged a brutal war on my innocent driving machine and its surrounding habitat.  No signs of life.  Which brought on an instant case of the sads.  Oh cruel cruel world.  I spent 2 hours, half a tank of gas, and the tread on my new tires only to move half an inch on the driveway.  However I did dig pretty much to Beijing with the excellent tire spin I had going on. Oh no, here come the sads again.  So I cried.  And kicked things...giant icy things.  I even managed to kick a bag of what appeared to be tiny animal organs frozen to the snowbank.  That helped with the sads a bit.  How do you not laugh a little at some baby sized kidneys.  Everything is cute when its fun sized.  Anyways, mid-enjoyment in my discovery a car pulled up to the end of my driveway.  Not any car, but an old broke ass VW van.  The driver jumped out and asked if I needed help, and not just any driver, it was one of those mind boggling humans.  The ones who get you with their evil trickery.  Are they a he or a she? Are those baby boobs or an illusion.  Is that enlarged camel toe or an enlarged prostate?  This particular devious warlock had long shoulder length blond hair and baggy clothes hiding any incriminating evidence.  Well except their entire shemale buttcrack which was out on display like a thanksgiving turkey.  So the conversation started.  It went something like this:

Me: sob sob fuck fuck whore shit sob

Neighbor: Need a tow?

Me: No I have both of mine, thank you.

Neighbor:  You look stuck

Me: You're really smart

Neighbor:  I might be able to tow you free with my 1960 broke down VW van

Me:  I think I'll just walk the 30 miles to work

Neighbor: Let me just grab my rope (full crack exposed including but not limited to partial unidentifiable undercarriage) By the way, I'm your neighbor.  My name is.....(get ready for it)......Kelly

Me: Awesome, that solves everything.  I'll just call you It's Pat, Mm'kay?


Kelly never did get me out, that bitch/bastard.   And so my life long obsession will begin.  Warlock-1  Rachael-0