PCS Road Trip, Part 1

Ahh, there's nothing like starting up a cross country drive (later than scheduled) with a toddler, two kittens, and a semi-pissed off husband.  At least I remembered to pack plenty of snacks!

(Texas hill country, as seen from my truck.  And that's my garter from our wedding on the rearview mirror, :D  )

(More Tejas hills.  Beautiful)

(And the hills give way to plains...)

(...and cotton fields.)

(My kitties took up permanent residence in my lap.)

Merry Christmas!

From my chaos family to yours.

(My hard-won tree.  I had to punch out some bitches navigate the Christmas Eve crowds to get this beauty at 40% off!)

May your credit card bills be small and the rum in your eggnog strong!

It's ALLLIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE!!!!!

The cable guy showed up on our doorstep with an early Christmas present: The Internets.  I have many pictures and stories to share from our cross-country journey; however those will have to wait until I hit Wallyworld and claim my last minute holiday bargains and knock out a few bitches along the way.

It's nice to be back!!!!

While the road trip gods have smiled upon us...

... the gods of health have not.  We arrived in the Land of the Rocky Mountains last night.  While both my husband and child managed to survive the trip, we all got nasty colds.  Sigh.  I have seen more snow in the past 24 hours then I've ever seen in the past 23 years!  I now own snowboots.  My year round flip-flop no sock wearing ass is now being forced to wear snowboots.  My husband is amused.  I am not.  I did get some great pictures though.  I'll get them up once I can freakin breathe through my nose again.

Moving day.

FINALLY we are out of this podunk little town!  (This is a prescheduled post, if everything goes as planned we should be on the road by 6 am).  I'm facing a 13 hour, 800+ mile drive with a two year old and cranky husband (and two kittens) all crammed into a Ford F150 (All while towing my dinky Neon in the back.  And my husband refuses to let me drive, so he deserves what he gets!)  Not to mention there's a nasty snowstorm that's supposed to hit Colorado on Tuesday.  I think that my husband and his attitude may not survive the trip this should be fun.  Send some road angels my way people!

Oh yea and as of 6 pm Sunday night, I don't have all my shit packed.  Woot.

This'll be a short one.

You know your day is off to a great start when your toddler decides to retrieve a stepstool, get into your purse, find the bag of Reeses Pieces that you have hidden in there (Shush, it's not like ya'll don't do it too!), and upend the entire bag on the floor (the scatter factor on a wood floor is about 5 feet for a reeses piece) all because she wants "chocate."

All before coffee has even touched my lips.  Sigh.

Thank God for the ready availability of corners for time outs.

So I'm sitting on the floor in my empty living room, eating potato chips...

...because the movers came yesterday and packed up all my crap.  And as the fates would have it, our new house on base in Colorado isn't ready yet.  We should know by this Friday when our move-in date is.  In the meantime it's cheaper to just stay here, instead of going ahead to CO and forking over cash for a hotel room.  We're already sleeping on an air mattress, so no harm no foul.

The moving men descended upon my belongings way, WAY too early in the morning.  I had no caffeine in my system.  A brush had touched neither my hair nor my teeth.  The Kid went absolutely happy-crazy over the sight of so many people in the apartment (she loves people) and tried to "help" some of the guys pack.  Not such a great idea.  So I scooped her up and off to the Promised Land of the Golden Arches we went.  The Hubby glared at me as I made my escape, but whatever.  Mmmmm.... sausage biscuit...

The Kid was so hyped up by the time we got there she was literally running in circles around me.  I can't tell if the other patrons were amused or tolerant, but at least the little devil was cheerful and friendly as she tore through the place.  Like I told Heidi yesterday, I offered my child to a friendly looking grandma type.  "Sure you can keep her for a day or two, just give me your cell phone number.  I've got 20 bucks in my wallet for diapers.  Her name's Julia, here you go!"  Can you tell it's been a while since the Hubby and I have had "Grownup Hug Time?"

(Christmas tree in the city square)

Bless my husband, he took the Kid off my hands after the movers got out of there.  I actually got to take a two hour nap!  The angels sang!  Then we bundled up, packed ourselves up into the car, and headed out to take in the Christmas lights.  The city sets up a gorgeous display all along the river that you can drive along.  So pretty!  Then (refer to yesterday's picture post) we ended up at McDonald's Playland.  It was a nice change of pace and a relaxing day, and one I needed desperately!

Have any of ya'll gotten a break recently?  

It's a good thing I'm a Humanist, or else I'd be going to Hell...

Georgie over at Decisionally Challenged has this fantastic bloggy thing she likes to call The Confessional Booth.  It's basically a place for her readers to get the heavy stuff off their chest, which I think is great.  After going back and forth about leaving my confession as Anonymous, I decided to keep it real.  After all, what's the point of having a blog if not to be honest?  Here's my confession for this month:

"Toyed with the idea of being anonymous but screw it...

My husband fell in love with me when we first met and became friends 5 years ago. He was married at the time. He never told me.

I fell in love with my husband two years ago. We were both married at the time (my divorce from my ex husband wasn't final). His marriage was on the rocks and his ex wife had already brought up the idea of leaving him.

One day about a year and a half ago we both finally realized that we were in love with each other. We talked ALL night. The very next morning my husband left my house, went back to his (then) wife, and told her that it was over. It took her less than SIX hours to pack her car. I gave her $700 to get back home, my husband filled up her gas tank and she was GONE.

We got married last May. While things are definitely not perfect, we're happy and we love each other. My daughter finally has a father who loves her and provides for her.

Here's the worst part about it: I think my husband's ex deserved it. She treated my husband horribly while they were married. I also feel like I'm justified in my judging- my husband and I have been friends for 5 years, and I've seen his previous marriage in action."

My first thought right after posting this was "Holy crap, I am a bad person.  Who the hell acts like that?"

I guess you just had to be there.  If you were there with me you would have seen how miserable my husband was back then, how badly he was treated.  It was awful seeing my friend agonize because his (then) wife refused to get a job, refused to get marriage counseling (or counseling for herself), refused to leave the house (or clean the house, for that matter), refused to get off the computer... she basically rejected life, slept all day, and played WoW all night.  For four years.  He was at the end of his rope and she had already told him that she wanted to go back to her mother's house.

At that point in time I had been legally separated from my ex husband for a year and a half.  My baby was sleeping through the night and I was enjoying a very full social life.  I had at least two dates a week and I was having a freaking blast!    I also owned a beautiful three bedroom home; after my ex husband got kicked out on his ass left it became a busy, happy house.  Because I was the only one of my circle of friends who "lived out in town" (military-speak for "not stuck on base in the prison barracks), my house was the go-to hangout spot.  I loved it!  I had friends in and out of the house all the time, cooking, talking, playing with the baby, watching movies.  I was in heaven.

So it wasn't too hard for my husband to fit himself into my crowd of friends.  He told me later that he had fallen in love with me years ago, when we first became friends.  And that as hard as he tried, he just couldn't put me out of his heart; he also told me that when we started spending more time together he fell in love with me all over again.  The worse his marriage got, the more time he spent at my house.  And the more time I spent with him, well you know the end of the story right?

Me, not being stupid, refused to acknowledge my feelings for him.  The man was married, however unhappily and married men tend to stay, well, married.  I had a baby to think about and she wasn't going to benefit if I gave into my brainless hormones.  I continued to date, but the more men I dated the more I just wanted to come back home, take off my heels, and talk to my friend.

It wasn't until after my husband (among some other friends) spent a three day weekend at my house that I finally gave in to my feelings.  He went back to his apartment to grab a shower and some clothes and that's when he realized that his (then) wife hadn't even noticed he'd been gone.  For three days.  And that was the end of that.  He came right back to my house and told me that his marriage was totally over.  He wanted a legal separation, a divorce filed, and her out of their apartment.

And like I said before, ya'll know the rest of the story.

Did I feel guilty about being the "other woman?"  Hell yes.  Do I think I was the reason their marriage failed?  Hell NO.  I think if I hadn't been in the picture either my husband and his ex would still be married and miserable, or she would have left him like she was planning to do in the first place.  A failure on both counts.  Do I ever think my husband will leave me for "greener pastures?"  NO. 

We're not perfect but we both work our asses OFF to make our marriage work.  We signed up for marriage counseling with the base chaplain just so that we could learn some much needed communication skills.  We still go see the chaplain about three times a month and it's awesome.  Marriage counseling WORKS.  We put considerable time and effort into actually being friends, into talking and spending time together. 

Still, the way we fell in love obviously still bothers me.  Way to walk the morally ambiguous line woman.  And how the HELL am I supposed to tell the Kid about all this?  Hmm...

Any thoughts?  Have you ever done anything you're not proud of, even if you don't regret it?  Join me in a toast to bloggy honesty!  Salute.

Disney Princesses rule my life.

So we finally named both of the new kittens.  And when I say "we" I mean "I."  My husband wanted to name them Killer and Marpat, respectively.  Needless to say, he will not be allowed near the birth certificates of our future children.

(Wuv.  We gots it.)

(Closeup of Belle.  She's a calico, isn't she pretty?)

Instead the poor guy has cats named Beast and Belle.  To make things worse, the Kid immediately picked up on the names and the cats come when called (sometimes).  Hubby is not amused and I think it's fucking hilarious.

It's just one of those days...

You ever have one of those days where you can't shake "the blues" off?  Today is one of those days.  Four years ago when I was first diagnosed with depression, I was shocked when I realized that the meds weren't a panacea.  Of course I was nineteen then, and nineteen year olds are inherently stupid.  (I also got married [for the first time] when I was nineteen, but that's a whole 'nother story.  Lets just say nineteen was not a good year for me.) 

Everytime I get stuck in the doldrums of a depression downswing, I love alliteration I'm still a little suprised.  The meds I'm on right now make me feel so normal about 75 percent of the time.  Normal meaning functioning in the even-keeled middle of the road.  That's a good chunk of feelin' stable right there.  But the other times the depression hits me like a cliche freight train and I'm a goner.  I almost feel like I don't have the right to feel this way, that I should find a way to somehow shake myself out of it.  Whatever "it" is. 

When I'm depressed I don't feel like doing a helluva lot.  I look around and my little apartment is TRASHED.  Granted, it doesn't take a lot of work to mess up 500 square feet.  But STILL.  I'm a freakin' housewife.  Taking care of this stuff is my job.  At least the Kid is dressed.  And she's destroying a peanut butter and jelly sandwich as we speak.  I also took her outside this morning and she played for about an hour while I cleaned out my car.

For me, cleaning almost always helps with the depression.  And so does the realization that I only have 4 and 1/2 days until the movers come and pack most of our things up.  So I have to throw away the junk that I don't want boxed, give away some clothes and things the Kid has grown out of, do some organizing, clean out and CLEAN both vehicles... the list is endless.  And I'm tired.  And thanks to the USMC, the movers are coming a full FOUR days before we actually leave for Colorado.  Thank God we're sleeping on an air mattress (it can be deflated and stuffed in the trunk of my car) or else it would be the floor for us!  I've slept in more uncomfortable places, but not by choice.  I also have to pack my car with clothes, toys, valium, entertainment...  Anyone want to come over here and help me?

"PCS" is military-speak for "We own you."

This picture kind of speaks for itself.  Permanent Change of Station!  WE'RE MOVING!!!!  Finally.  After spending 4 years in the backwoods of North Carolina, after this hellish training evolution in rural Texas we are finally on our way to the land of the Rockies! 

(I'm not going to really try and hide where we're at.  It's going to be pretty obvious which major metropolitan area we're inhabiting.  The stalkers I have so far are really friendly ladies :)  Hi guys!  If you're a non-nice stalker, feel free to come find me anyway.  I'll be the short little Italian chick behind the 12 gauge.)

So it's T-minus 8 days to M-day.  I am so grateful that I only have this tiny one bedroom apartment to clean and organize.  Thank God the USMC is moving and packing us on their dime.  Thank God I don't have to pack all our stuff with a toddler underfoot.  Thank God because we're broke, can't pay movers on our own and I HATE packing and unpacking (especially unpacking.).  I hate unpacking so much that when I was 16 and moved into a new house, my best friend came over and unpacked my entire room.  I think she was just sick of seeing boxes stacked up for three weeks straight!  Since I can't fly her out to unpack me, I'll just have to do it myself.  Sigh.

Unpacking is going to be a total pain in the ass.  Most of my household goods have been in storage since August.  The stuff I have in the apartment now consists of my absolute essentials.  So I have a plan.  I'm going to unpack my shipment from the apartment immediately.  The furniture all goes in the house, of course.  The rest of the boxes from storage are going in the garage, so that I can have a clean house while I unpack one box at a time.  I'm am a currently a recovering pack rat, I have to be serious about this.  Not ONE DAMN THING is coming into my house unless it has a home.  NOT ONE.  The homeless stuff is getting boxed back up and staying in the garage.  I think I'm going to have one hell of a yard sale next summer!

I have to be organized or else I will choke someone.  I can't wait to post pictures of the new house!  The housing on base was built in 2004 so they are brand spankin new and beeeeyoutiful!!!  I refuse to mar brand spankin new with my clutter.

So I have my plan.  Now I just have to survive the road trip from West Texas to Colorado!  I will be cooped up in my Dodge Neon with a toddler and two kittens.  A thirteen hour drive.  My hubby damn him  will be driving the truck in beautiful, beautiful silence.  I plan to have a DVD player for the Kid and a rather large cage in the backseat for the kittens.  And many, many snacks.  Any more lifesaving ideas?

About last night...

I'm sure ya'll are wondering how last night looked in the bright light of day (Tooj!  So talkin to you!).

My dear husband is a rough, tough Marine but he knows when he's in the doghouse. He returned home from work contrite. And hubby knows that the most important part of an apology is the great make up sex.  No freakin person is perfect and we love the hell out of each other, but we also annoy the hell out of each other.  And that folks, is marriage in a nutshell.  Hub's a good guy and to be perfectly honest we're going through a lot of stress right now. But more on that on tomorrow's blog!

I don't mind posting about the rough stuff because I owe it to the universe (and myself) to be honest.  I love mommy blogs, but as I read through some of them I can't help but think that a lot of the down and dirty gets glossed over. Which is all fine and good, freedom of speech rules baby! But if I can't be honest and uncensored on the interwebs, where else can I be?
 
I know this marriage and motherhood stuff ain't pretty sometimes. I just hope that either:
 
a) Someone will benefit from my experiences,
 
b) someone else has done it before and can give me sage advice or,
 
c) someone is going through the same damn thing and we can get together and kvetch.
 
As for the Hubby, he is aware of my blog but he thinks it's a personal thing. Just like email, I may leave it open on the computer but he doesn't feel the need to go digging in it. And if he did, no harm no foul.  He's pretty hip to the fact that I use our family as blog fodder. I told him that it'll all be worth it ten years down the road when I get my book deal :)

Why my husband is sleeping on the couch tonight...

Oh no, it wasn't like that.  I didn't get the pleasure of kicking the man out on the sofa myself.  I wish I did, it would have felt GREAT.  He just decided that it was A-OK to come home from the gym and pass out on the couch.  An action which, while annoying as hell, I normally don't have a problem with except for the fact that I didn't get married just to SLEEP ALONE.  Never mind the fact that you promised to give the Kid her bath, clean the litter box, and take out the trash.  Never mind the fact that we had an arguement right before we left for the gym about chores (The main point of said arguement being my complaint with the fact that you constantly volunteer for chores and you NEVER follow through.  Ever.).  Never mind that you got all high and mighty on me and told me that your lack of follow through was MY fault because I'M the one who never gives you a chance to do ANYTHING.  Marinate in your own sweat, sleep in your sneakers and gym clothes.  You're a big boy and it's not my job to wipe your ass for you. 

The real problem occurred when I attempted to do the nice thing and gently wake my darling husband so that he could hit the showers and the rack:  The man had the cojones to YELL at me and tell me to "LEAVE ME ALONE" and to "SHUT UP".

Yea.  The Hubby talks in his sleep, but I'm pretty sure he was awake for this one.  Either way, I'm not letting his sorry ass off the hook.  My tolerance for bullshit is so very low.  Remember I spent 5 years on active duty, watching the male Marines attempt to sexually harass me and/or play with their balls.  You talk to me like that at the risk of losing a limb.

To make a bad situation worse, the man had already seared off my last nerve last night when he told me that I "don't understand what it's like to have responsibility" because I don't have a "real job."

Soak THAT one in for a moment and seethe with me.

Okay there husband of mine, here's the deal.  If you want to talk to me like that, FINE.  Do your own dishes, buy your own groceries, bake your own desserts, clean your own kitchen, wash your own clothes, cook your own meals (from scratch), vacuum your own carpet, IRON YOUR OWN UNIFORM, change your own sheets, lay out your own clothes, clean your own bathroom, run your own errands, scrub your own floors, pay your own bills, clean your own toilet, scrub your own tub, FIX YOURSELF THAT FUCKING SNACK, get your own glass of milk, work your ass off to scrimp and save every penny you earn and while you're at it, GO FUCK YOURSELF. 

While you're busy doing that, I'm going to take a big chunk of your hard earned money and put the Kid in daycare part time.  Then I'm going to take MY laptop, sit my happy ass in Starbucks, and contemplate searching for a REAL job.