A Friday Evening Before a Birthday in Your 30s

Here I am again, turning another year older. It is 8 o'clock on Friday night and the one thing I would really like to do is go to bed soon. Hello 31. And probably having two kids, one of which is still a newborn. Many things have happened in the last year, many changes. Moved from Arkansas to Mississippi. Bought a house in yet another state. Had another daughter. Retired. Became the one thing I never thought I would be - a stay at home mom. Got a puppy, again.
And many more changes expected in the year to come. Moving to yet another state, to that house we just closed on. Trading apartment living for beach townhouse living. New job for my husband. Hopefully, new friends for all of us.

Hello 31.

Transitions

Growing up moving, what felt like constantly, and then being in the military for almost 12 years, I am quite used to transitions, change, moving, not knowing what is over the horizon. But the transition I am currently in is feeling like it is rocking my world. 6 days ago I medically retired from the Air Force. And this week I have been transitioning.

That means so many things as far as logistics, things like transferring medical benefits, getting different ID cards, working out retirement/VA pay, changing life insurance, dental insurance, and what has felt like an endless to-do list so that life can continue relatively normally. Those things are just outward "steps." Things you stand in line to accomplish and then they are done. They are transitioned. The part of transitioning that is rocking my world has little to do with Tricare beneficiary statuses or remembering to get signed up for Veterans Group Life Insurance.

It's leaving the working world behind that is starting to become difficult. Becoming a stay at home mom, a full time mom. Coming to terms with all that education, all those struggles to get to where I was as a pilot, a military officer, a highly employable, well-payed, well-trained worker bee, all of it going to what feels like waste. As I sit at home and clean up accidents from my potty-training toddler and spend afternoons trying to be as still as possible so this new human growing inside of me doesn't make me puke up my lunch, again.

It's also the transition to loneliness. We have also just moved to a new place, and gone are the easy work friendships that always develop. Gone are the adult conversations that I took for granted as a working mom. At the moment, my toddler is only just starting her vocabulary, so there aren't even toddler conversations that I can understand. My husband goes off to work and hangs out all day with his new coworkers and in his free time he talks about the new things he is learning and has these important meetings he puts aside time to do so he can study with his coworkers. My job requires no such study sessions. No such free time is coming my way. I am lucky if I get a shower when I need it. Oh, and a haircut, that hasn't happened in over a year. So, the resentment when my husband has these loads of reasons to not be around and to be doing his thing, is starting to creep in - already.

Maybe I am not cut out to be a full time mom. Or maybe I just need some more time to adjust to all of it.

Turning 30

I am turning 30 this month. That seems like a pretty big milestone, you know, for a 29 year old. It feels like this age separates the adults from the kids, but for real this time. Like you can still get away with being childishly irresponsible in your 20s, it is almost expected. But in your 30s, it just becomes sad. I have wrinkles. No really, real wrinkles. Ok, they aren't super noticeable, but they are there. And it doesn't make me sad. I earned these suckers. And not just because I should have used more moisturizer. I have worry lines and laughter lines. They have started to faintly trace their way across my forehead and along the sides of my mouth. I have scars that haven't faded away. Some from hard work and some from poor decisions. And one very large one from bringing a very special person into my life. I am turning 30, and it appears that I have proof that I have lived.

Living for Today

When I was younger, living for the moment meant something different than it does today. It usually meant making a poor decision, like having another glass of wine that I didn't need, spending more money than necessary, or eating more chocolate. Or something spontaneous, like sailing 700 miles across the Atlantic on a whim. Today it means something quite different. It means spending more time thinking about today than pondering on the future. It means letting the joy of watching my baby slowly fall asleep override the unnecessary sense of urgency for her to fall asleep now. And for this incessant planner, it means taking time to enjoy the daily moments instead of obsessively planning and dreaming about future ones.

Too Much Time in Between

So, I have this thing. They call it Crohn's Disease. It's pretty easy to look up on Google what that means, but the essence is that it is a nasty currently incurable gastrointestinal, autoimmune disease. In real life terms, that equates to my insides revolting against me. There's a whole long list of symptoms that makes life sucky - endless bathroom trips, exhaustion, stomach pain, joint pain... It gets tiring explaining it, but I suppose at the moment it is my life. Right now I am on steroids and mesalamine. They haven't worked to get me back to 100%, but it worked ok enough to try to wean off the steroid. That went horribly, and now I am prepping for my 4th colonoscopy to see how Crohn's has progressed. Today is the day before the procedure. Which means not eating (agh, I am so hungry!!) and drinking nastiness all day, but mostly this evening. This is my current view. That Gatorade is filled with nasty-grossness. Don't be fooled into thinking I am just really well hydrated. I am half way done with the nasty drink.

Tomorrow, is the big day and will hopefully tell my current GI doc what he should do about my meds to help me get better.

New dog

Got a new puppy today. Her name is Zoe. She's a mastiff mix. I think she is going to be huge. But we'll see. She is really sweet, but already quite a bit of work. Like most pups, she doesn't really like her kennel at the moment. It took her half an hour to stop crying tonight. Hopefully she'll get better sooner than later.

Our cruise

Cruising is fun. I am not sure if it is my favorite type of vacation. It is a unique experience...well compared to other vacations. The actual cruise experiences are rather cookie cutter. Seems that long time cruise vacationers have difficulty finding new things to do. Every day has similar scheduled activities and menu items are standard American buffet or restaurant fare. They do have a couple unique restaurants. For a flat cover fee you can dine there. We went to the steakhouse. The steak was impressive and the cute little appetizers and large desserts were very tasty. One aspect I'd the cruise that never fails to impress is the superb service staff. The wait staff is great at what they do and the room attendant assigned to us is amazing as well. Almost everyone we've encountered in the service department really helps make the trip.
Cruises have too many nights that require dressing up. I really dislike getting dressed up. Every now and then I forget how dumb it is and think it will be cool. Then I dress up and cannot wait to get out of the ridiculous clothes and uncomfortable shoes. We did however go to every single dress up night and an additional one at the steakhouse. Why? Well apparently the cruise saves the best dinner faire for dress-up night, which means if you want to eat anything but buffet food, you dress-up. Oh well, we changed as soon as we finished dessert. :-)
A cool thing about the cruise is it took us to 4 different islands. This was sweet. However, they pulled into and out of port on the ship's schedule, which sometimes meant early mornings. Not the coolest. But it was still nice. We drove around Nassau and Providence Island of the Bahamas for the better part of a day and found a nice beach to tan on. The water there was rather cold, probably because it was the Atlantic still, but we enjoyed watching the ocean and having fried conch at a local joint. Next stop was St. Thomas. There we went on a shore excursion that we had previously booked through the cruise line. It was a lot of fun. The catamaran took us to St. John, which is a pretty smaller island with pretty clear water and decent snorkeling. On the way back the crew raised the sails and took the scenic way back, while serving us Champagne and rum punch. We bonded more with a couple we'd met at The Alchemy, a hang out spot on the ship. We spent a good amount of our evening free time with them and also took a tour with them to the Bacardi factory in Puerto Rico. San Juan, Puerto Rico was our next stop. We got a taxi to the local rum factory and took a tour and then had lunch at a good Puerto Rican restaurant in old town San Juan. Our last stop, and one of the neatest islands, was Grand Turk. It seems to be 100% reliant on tourism, and mostly cruse tourism. It has a barrier reef that made our power snorkeling excursion very cool, and we heard made for an amazing scuba diving experience. The water was incredibly blue and clear. The only unsettling part was the barracuda that kept following us around. The island itself seemed to be falling apart quite a bit. They were still recovering from a Hurricane that hit some 4-5 years ago. I can't imagine the cost of living there. The island's main resource was its salt lakes that are no longer worked. But for a tourist, it is an ideal location to visit. The last bit of our cruise was a day at sea that we spent learning about the history and making of cocktails. We hit a storm mid-afternoon which made the ship rock quite more than normal, but the ship is so big it did little more than make walking in a straight line or standing still hilarious.

Got a flight scheduled to Bagram for later this morning. Happy to be getting to my base so I can settle in and start flying. Planning on keeping myself busy with work and exercising, then MBA classes in August.  And hopefully SOS in correspondence when the captain's board results come out. I am going to try to keep a blog or email chain updated while I am gone. However, I have not had much success with blogging regularly, or keeping in touch via email, so we'll see how it goes. These  first couple blogs will be posted after I am settled in Bagram, because of internet short comings here in Manas.

Deployment journey has begun

Starting my first deployment. Just getting in country is a huge ordeal. Started traveling tuesday. It is saturday, and I am still waiting for my last flight to get me in country.

Well, MC-12 tour take two has begun. More time away from home, more living in California. California is a sort of scary place. I feel like things are more intense here, maybe there are just more people in a smaller place than I am used to...also things are a lot more pricey. I am nervous again about starting the program. Nervous that I will stink at flying, nervous that I will be in the wrong place on day one, nervous that I don't actually exist in the system (my name isn't on the roster yet), nervous that I will be late, just nervous in general I suppose.

Date Night

Josh and I finally had a special date night this weekend. It has been a while since it has been a real date. Though we do tend to meet for lunch and spend us time together frequently, this was more. We went to a fancy pantsy restaurant on the river called Brave New Restaurant. The place had delectable food, a romantic atmosphere, and higher than average prices. Perfect for a dress-up date night. The place proved to be an interesting location, tucked indiscriminately on the second floor of a business complex away from downtown, but close enough to provide a gorgeous view of the skyline over the river. If a person was not looking for it, they wouldn't find it. And even if they were looking, it might be difficult. Thankfully, I had perused online reviews and learned of this oddity beforehand. After dinner, we saw a movie, The Hunger Games. We have both been reading the books and thought we would see what we thought of the movie. Not sure what the director was thinking, perhaps he was intoxicated for the movie's making, but that camera work felt as if an iphone camera was doing the shooting - constantly out of focus, jumpy, and not actually clued in on what the audience wanted to see. I was just thankful that it was right-side-up. Who knows with the artsy nonsense, the director could have gone even more ridiculous with the iphone camera phone filming and spliced it together sideways and upside down. The actual plot and characters did a very good job of portraying the book, and I hope the second and third films are not as plagued with overzealous camera work.

I had the privilege of having both of my brothers visit me at the same time. It was great to be together again. It felt a lot like hanging out when we were all at home. Of course there were vast differences. For instance, it was my home, my one brother was on his way to being stationed on a Pacific Island, and the other is working and going to school full time to be a computer scientist/programmer. Life sure is different than I pictured it when I was 16.

California again. This time there are no forest fires to mar the horizons. And I am finding it has a strange beauty. The hills roll on forever and are back-dropped by far off mountains. Dry light brown grass covers the hills and little forests pop up randomly and litter the sides of the taller hills and smaller mountains. And the trees! There are so many different kinds of them. A few evergreens, some ones with all their leaves gone that look like gnarly African savanna trees, and other regular oaks and such that I don't really know their precise names but notice them from other parts of the US. I have been running close to sunset each day and boy those sunsets sure are gorgeous.
Oh ya, I suppose I am here for training - deployment training at that. So, not tons of fun. But it'll be a good thing, supporting people that need it and good for the career, all in all a good thing. The training is supposedly 6 days a week, which pretty much blows, but it better than 7 days a week... And they are nice enough to give us a 4 day break for Thanksgiving and even a 3 day weekend for Veteran's Day. Huh, this will be the last Veteran's Day that I am not myself a war veteran. Dun dun dunnn. Finally getting to do the J-O-B.

Today marks the two weeks of marathon training. It's going pretty well, and it feels really nice to have accomplished a goal again. Recently, with moving and training, I haven't kept up with much of what I set out to do. So, two weeks of sticking to a running schedule feels really good. Rest day tomorrow! And last day of MC-12 IQT, which hopefully means heading back home Tuesday morning - as long as the money people back home get themselves straightened out. We'll see. Monday morning means bugging them until they break and do their jobs!

3rd day of my MC-12 career and 2nd day of marathon training. Neither of which is intense, but both have their painful parts, like me not being able to stay awake or pay attention for very long, and painful legs. But they both have their upside...I feel better, more alive when I run. And...ummm, I met knew people...oh, academics for IQT is half way done... Ya, I never really thought the academic part of flying was very fun. We get to do charts and calculations tomorrow. Best part of learning! Except that no one else really enjoys or understands it in general, so it takes forever. But we have a bunch of techy majors, so maybe it'll go faster than usual.

Anyway, back to dinner and "studying".

First day of MC-12 initial qualification. Well, I haven't studied in a while. Or it felt that way after 8 hours of someone telling me what I should learn in the next 5 days. But here they don't seem to be as thorough as pilot training. So, it shouldn't be as intense. Also, I don't like hotels - well, particularly the Hilton, way too overpriced. I suppose they do give me $56/day for food. But I really don't think an overcooked soggy chicken pasta dish is worth 15 of those dollars, even if the government is paying for it. Another reason is that TV is lame. And TV sucks when you have to watch the shows at the time of their choosing instead of yours. AND, people are awkward unless you tip them. What happened to people doing their jobs for - oh, I don't know - their paychecks.

In other news, I got a Nook for my birthday. It is pretty cool. I am almost finished with my first book already, and I haven't even read the instructions. Free books are money. ;-)

Tomorrow is the first day of marathon training ... or pre-marathon training at least.

5 days. That's how many days before I leave for MC-12 IQT, and the beginning of what will become a very long separation. IQT is only two and a half weeks long, and then I will be home for somewhere between 10 days and 2 weeks. After that I leave for Beale and the separation starts in earnest. I am hoping Josh can come visit before I deploy, and especially for Thanksgiving or something close to it that we can both celebrate. After the couple months at Beale I will deploy and be gone for 7 months or more. And it is very unlikely that I will see Josh at all in those 7+ months, unless we happen to cross paths on a runway somewhere out there. Hey, there's always hoping.

Well, during our extended separation, we'd both like to get in better shape, and do something "together" - some sort of common goal that we can share when we are reunited. We have decided to train for a marathon. Hopefully, the Air Force Marathon in September 2012. By then we will both be back stateside and since it is Air Force supported, we should both be able to get leave to attend the race.

Next Monday, we are both starting a training program for it. And there you have it, one goal, two people, multiple states/countries, 26.2 miles, 51.5 weeks away.

11 September 2011. 10 years after the world stopped turning - for most of us in the US at least. Almost everyone remembers exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news. For me, after initially hearing my grandma exclaim over the phone that the second plane had hit in NY, the rest of the day was somewhat of a blur. I remember the neighbor coming over and me and my family going to watch the events unfold with her, because no one wanted to be alone that day. I remember hanging on to every word that Pres. Bush said in his speech afterwards. I remember the feeling of hopelessness and anger. And now, ten years later, I still feel the rush of anger and indignation at the thought of such needless deaths. Of such violence toward unsuspecting civilians. I think of my upcoming deployment and wish that I didn't need to go invade the privacy of another country's citizens. But I know that unfortunately for them, and for the family I will leave behind for so long, I must. To prevent the terror that they harbor (willingly or not) from causing such pain to my country's people again. Because as I remember 10 years ago as a terrible tragedy that a few words cannot adequately describe and an act forcing the US to enter a war against terrorists that other countries have long been fighting, others remember this day with a pain that most will be lucky enough to never feel, and a fear that those same terrorists will want to commemorate their loss with even more loss. And that, that fear that Americans still have of a violent attack on their own soil, that is what makes my job most important. And I train for years on end and deploy for months on end to fight a battle not really my own, to banish that fear from my nation.

Sleep always seems elusive when I travel. You'd think being more sleepy from driving most of the day would help. The travel seems kind of endless right now as well. I suppose SERE had lots of random "travel" experiences. So, I am on my way to water survival down in Florida. It should be a fun time, as long as the hurricanes don't rain us out. After that I am on my way to finally sign into Little Rock which will be home for the next 3 to 4 years. And of course shortly after I get to the Rock I will be leaving for MC-12 training and then the deployment. I am excited to start flying again, and I am warming to the idea of deploying. Of course, deploying is never fun, but it'll be good for the career. And there will be lots of flying which will help the time pass quickly.
Now to get some sleep so I can finish the drive tomorrow.

The End of UPT

Well, here I am at the end of pilot training - a very significant event no doubt. I have my assignment, which will eventually place me back in the arms of the man I love. Though as most things in life, the journey will seem a long one.
The first part of my assignment is an MC-12 deployment. That entails a month of survival training, approximately 2 months of training to fly the plane, and a 6 to 9 month deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan. The plane/mission seems rather interesting and exciting itself. Though I must say that living in tents in the desert is not quite what I had in mind when I joined the air force. If I was really that much in to camping and roughing it I would have joined the army. But that seems to be the current way of doing things in the air force as well. So, off to the desert I will go, and hopefully I can be useful to the air force and I get some good experiences and combat time out of it.
That will of course have a huge down side of being away from Josh for almost a year - not looking forward to that in the least bit.
The 2nd part of my assignment is flying c-130s at Little Rock AFB. That part I am really looking forward to. Of course there is more training involved with that, 6 months of it. All of which is at Little Rock, which is awesome. Because then I will finally get to live with the man I married again.
For now I am just waiting for my training dates and orders and procrastinating. I actually have a decent amount to do before I leave, which could be on a week and a half or even a month. I should definitely get to work on all those things, but this week there has been little motivation. This weekend I will have to force myself to find some...after the baby shower that I forgot about. Haha, so maybe Sunday?

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