My prediction was wrong

Work didn't forget about me...they are having my going away party combined with a group of Airman that are leaving in May. Great.

I am having a pretty shitty day. It all started last evening.
Dave calls me at work and said he had some bad news for me. He can't get his Class A's (that's his dress uniform for all you non military folk) from the dry cleaners for the ball tonight. Apparently somewhere in the last two weeks, they have changed their hours. They are now only open from 10-12 on Wednesdays. How can they just do that? So what does that mean? We're not going to the ball. Our whole fun evening of dress up and dancing is ruined. Plus we had a room rented for the evening cause this thing is an hour away and we'd be getting back to late to pick up Collin and come home. I am just so pissed right now.
Yesterday I asked Dave to call some of the other miltary cleaners to see if they had a contact number for the guy running that store and the one that he called said they don't know. So on a whim, I stopped by the cleaners that is located in the hospital and who should I see, but the owner of the shop at my husbands post. Apparently he owns or works at most of them. I told him the situation and you know what he told me? If you had only called me last night I could have gotten the uniform after I got off of work yesterday. But as it stands today, I can't leave this shop until 6pm. Too late for me to get his uniform for the ball. Oooh that irks me.
Knowing that if we only had contacted him yesterday (like I suggested) we could be dancing and have a great time at the last fancy event I probably ever get to have with my husband in the military.
This blows.

Off track...

This is my last week of work and I oversleep today. What a great start to my day! So I hustle around trying to get myself and Collin ready, which is always fun with a half asleep toddler. I get to work an hour late and people start asking me for information the instant I walk in the door. What patient is where, who has gone to surgery, where is so in so's chart. I missed morning report, I don't know what nurse has which patient, I feel lost, my routine is all out of wack. I never recouperated. I felt like a salmon swimming upstream. Boy was I glad to see 4:30 come along.
Tomorrow is my last full day of work. I'm working a half day on Friday because Dave and I are going to a military ball Friday night and I've got to get my hair done and Collin to the sitter. There is one thing that dissapoints me about this week. I haven't heard any plans of my farewell get together. It probably sounds narssistic, but everyone that leaves our floor (it's kinda a custom in the military when you leave) gets one. That one final hoorah. Maybe there is some plan in the works that I don't know about, but every other farewell has been planned atleast a week in advance. I've been there for two years. I'm going to make a prediction. I'm going to get a goodbye card on Friday and they'll have some dinner planned for Friday night. And I won't be there. Cause I'll be at the Regimental Ball in Heidelberg. Nice huh. Is it wrong to want a proper farewell?

Just a few random pics...

Nothing news worthy happened today...so I thought I'd post a few of my favorite pics from the past few years.


This is Collin when he was just a few hours old...notice the exhausted mother in the background.

This is one of my dogs, Quincy. He is a Shetland Sheepdog (atleast that is what his papers say), but he looks more like Lassie. Dave and I took our dogs to the Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado for a fun day trip. It was amazing. This place looks like someone put the Sahara Desert in the middle of the mountains. I just love this picture. Don't you just love Quincy's backpack. He carried his dog toys and food and water for us! LOL!


The next pic is from our wedding day. We got married in a conservatory in Oklahoma City in the middle of July. Needless to say...it was very hot. It was a wonderful day spent with close friends and family. I just wish it hadn't gone by so fast. With all the greetings and picture taking, it's like we missed out on the majority of our own wedding. Dave only got to taste the piece of cake that I shoved in his mouth. It was gone by the time he went back to have more!



This last picture is one of my favorites. As a baby, Collin had that most horrible case of collic. I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy. Collic is when a baby cries and cries at about the same time each day for no identifiable reason. Usually it struck Collin in the evening, as we were getting ready to go to bed. It was a pretty rough patch, but we tried to approach it with alittle humor, hence the T-shirt.....:)

Grumble...

I hate daylight saving time. Anything that takes an hour away from my weekend truely sucks.....

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood...

I was driving home from work on Friday when I got a glimpse of something that disturbed me. I saw hate graffiti sprayed on a billboard as I was going into my babysitters village as well as when I entered my village.
I guess I should give a little bit of back story. I live pretty close to a huge military air base here in Germany. There used to be two big airstrips here, but just recently they closed one of them. When they closed that airstrip, it made the one that still exists a lot busier and they had to change some flight patterns. Unfortunately, when they did that, it brought the flight plan right over my village. I can kinda understand my neighbors being pissed. It would be like someone picking up your house and putting it next to a runway. It can get pretty noisy. Trust me I know, I live in the village too. It's not like they are going overhead every hour or anything either.
The billboards said things like "No more US Airbase" or "US Aircrafts kill" and I felt really uncomfortable in my own "adopted" village. I'm sure that since Germany didn't support us in the war in Iraq, there are people that aren't crazy about us being in their country. But they are making a WHOLE LOTTA $$$ because of us being in their country. I just think about the jobs we provide for them. Our government has an agreement with the German government that we'll give a certain amount of our jobs to local nationals. Germany has a huge unemployment rate and if we packed up and left it would mean even more people would be out of work. I don't know any figures on how much we have out there in government contracts and jobs, but I know we are paying a lot of money to have that airfield and all the jobs that go with it. I know my landlord is getting 900 euros (about $1200) a month rent from us and my babysitter is getting 350 (about $450) euros a month and that's all thanks to the United States. There are a lot of Americans doing the exact same thing in this same area. So why would they want us to leave? I'm sure it's just a minority of Germans in this area that are really pissed at us, so I don't want to say "all" of my neighbors are ready to lynch us. But it makes me uncomfortable.
I've never been a minority. I've never lived anywhere where there is animosity towards my country. This time for me in Germany has been an eye opener. I, as probably many Americans, have no idea what the rest of the world is like, or how what we do affects them. We're pretty much isolationists. Here in Germany people speak 4 or more languages. I was actually embarrassed by that not too long ago. I had a man come up to me on the street (he was an older man) as first asked me if I spoke German, I had to say nein (no). Then he said...Sprecken se Italian?, Spanish?, I had to say nein to all of them. So he tried to sputter out some garbled English just so we could communicate. I felt like a dumb American. I took French in highschool, but like lots of things, if you don't use it you lose it. And I haven't spoken French in 14 years. These people use it cause when you think about it, different countries here in Europe are like driving from state to state in the USA.
I just hope that things stay peaceful in my little village. There were some people demonstrating in front of our military installations during the anniversary of the war, but things have settled back down. (except for the graffiti) Can't we all just get along??

Sometimes it's the little things...

I can't believe how slow we were at work today. Last week we were completely full, shuffling patients around to free up beds, and today we had six patients. We had twenty last week, and now we're down to six. I got caught up on all my back work and was pretty much just sitting around reading the paper for most of the day. Our nurses even had time to play XBOX with some of our more ambulatory patients, which almost never happens. They are always so busy that they don't have time to interact with the patients like that! LOL. So it was a good day.
Not only was it a good day at work, but Collin was a little angel tonight and I got to watch American Idol pretty much uninterupted. For me, that is a good evening. Amazing how you can be grateful for the littlest things....

Still just a rat in a cage...part 2

Now that I've got Collin in bed for the night I can finish my thoughts.
I only have two weeks left at work before I'm a stay at home mom and I'm feeling excited and nervous. I'm very excited to be at home with Collin and yet I've never been without a job since I was about 16yrs old. I do find having a job, ie a place to go everyday, gives me a sense of purpose. I'm a person out there contributing to society. And the validation for that work is in the form of money. I know that staying at home and raising a family is contibuting to society. It really could be the most important contribution that we give since our children go out into the world and become other contributers. It's just hard to see that validation right away. When they are 30 and happy, healthy and successful in life, that is when you know that you did a good job. Raising kids is frightening to me. I know nothing about this "job". I am one of those people that like to read the instructions before I get started on a project. There really are no instructions. This kid is an individual, he is unlike me or my husband in many ways. I know we just have to do our best and hope we're doing all the right things. But that is scarey to me. I just don't want to screw this up.

Dave and I have made real strides lately in reducing our debt. Which is one of the reasons I'm able to even have the option to stay home with Collin. We filed our taxes and we're getting a huge refund this year. And it's ALL going to bills. We're gonna pay off his car that we got for him in Germany, then when we sell it (because we have to sell it before we leave Germany) we are putting that money on our Blazer to pay it off. We'll be going back to Oklahoma with a fully paid off vehicle. And since we got our intrest rate reduced while we were stationed overseas, we're paying it off two years early!!!! How cool is that? Plus we got all our credit cards paid off except for one and we're working on it. After that all we'll have is my car payment (that has a really low intrest rate) and my student loans (groan). I've never been so close to being debt free....I've always had something. It's an exciting feeling to know that when you go to work, you're not working to pay bills. You're working for you!! You can live your life and enjoy it because you have money, free and clear, to do whatever you want to do. Dave and I don't fight over money, but it will still be a load off both of our minds to know we don't have debt hanging over our heads.
Hopefully Dave and I will get good jobs when we get back to Oklahoma. It's even possible that Dave could get a job that pays well enough that I could stay at home with Collin and our future children and go back to school part time. That's my plan eventually anyway. It will just be nice to put down some roots somewhere.....

Still just a rat in a cage...

I went back to work last week, which is why I haven't been blogging lately. Man, after three weeks it's hard getting back in the groove of things. I went in to work all happy and refreshed and I felt like I had daggers shot at me from my co-workers eyes. The stress level is back and I could definately tell that I was missed. There were charts scattered everywhere, forms that needed to be copied, just a lot of loose ends that needed to be cleaned up. It's not rocket science, but somebody has to do it. The patient load has really picked up lately too. We're starting to have to shuffle beds around again to make room for more patients. It's starting to remind me of the battle of Fallujah. That was not a fun time. At our peak, we were seeing about 90-100 patients a month. I really hope for the patient's sake we don't have that happen again.

I didn't go to work today because Collin is sick. Back when I was single and didn't have kids, I always kinda thought that when parents called in sick for their kids, they were just slacking. But let me tell you, kids get sick a lot. Even my little boy, who is going to a nice German lady for daycare, gets sick a lot. I can only imagine if he went to a "true" daycare.
It all started yesterday. I fed him lunch at around noon and about an hour later he felt hot to me. I had Dave check his temp and he had alittle fever. Only about 100, which for a kid his age isn't too bad. He was just clingy and grumpy and generally miserable, so I went to the grocery store by myself and Dave stayed home with him. About an hour later when I returned from the store I was holding Collin when it happened. IT! The most horrible thing I've experienced as a parent so far. I was projectile VOMITED on. Collin puked all over me and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I was frozen, it was so unexpected....I couldn't even get him to the sink or toilet. I felt so bad for the little guy. But he almost felt better immediately. His temp started to go down, he started to rest. He actually slept through the night. He still had a temp this morning, so I took him to the doctor. They said it was just a stomach bug and that he should be feeling better tommorrow. Well...I hear him crying. He must have been startled awake from his nap or something cause it's only been 45 minutes.
Duty calls.....

Our trip is a wash...

The trip we were going to take while my husband is on leave is a wash. He just really doesn't want to go anywhere, and we both go back to work next week. What with the beautiful weather (smirk) and our being ill for two weeks, hasn't left us with much time for travel.
I'm really bummed about our time here in Europe. I had really hoped to see more of it before we leave this summer. We were able to see a couple of surrounding German villiages and go to Paris before I got pregnant in 2004. Once we had a baby, that kinda put a kink in the ol travel plans! LOL!! Hey, life happens. I wouldn't trade that kid for anything!

I loved Paris. We only had a day there, but we saw alot in that day. We went to the Louve Museum (which if you've been there you know I only saw a small portion of it, cause it could take a person a week to see it all) ,the Museum D'Orsay and the Eieffel Tower, and the Underground Catacombs. I rode on the metro and had dinner by the Seine river, it was an absolutely beautiful day and I hope to go back there again someday.

That being said, I can't wait to get back to the USA. I haven't set foot on American soil in almost three years and I have had enough. I'm spoiled, I'll admit it. I love the USA. We have 24 hour Walmarts and things to do on the weekends past 2pm. It doesn't cost a fortune to have fun in America. I want a pizza that has real pepperoni on it (not salami like they do here in Germany) I want to be able to go to a movie in the middle of the day, that kind of stupid, trivial stuff that we take for granted in the US. My family (except for my sister and brother in law) has never been able to see or hold my baby in person and I can't wait for them all to meet him and be a part of his life.

I've got a new pic of the little guy...he's learned how to get the kitchen cabinet doors open and his new hobby is to open them and shut them and put stuff in them.


He does it over and over again......you think he'd get bored. It's amazing how they are so easily amused. Could have saved me a fortune on toys!

Snowed in....

This is the view from our second story balcony. Its like a winter wonderland here right now. So quiet and peaceful. When the snow was falling, it was so beautiful. I felt like I was in the middle of a snow globe during a blizzard. I love the snow. You don't see much snow like this in Oklahoma, so I did enjoy it....but it's been snowing here for the past couple of days and we've been holed up in the house bored out of our minds. We could go outside and play in the snow, but we're still all getting over this cold/flu thing that we all still have. We are better now, but not quite 100%. I've got a little sled for Collin and I can't wait to take him outside to play with it so we'll see how things are tomorrow.
Maybe the sun will come out?

Have you heard this guy?

For those of you that don't already know, I'm a huge music lover. I love music of all kinds, everything from Phantom of the Opera to Perfect Circle. I don't think I could function if I wasn't able to have music in my life. For me, music reflects my moods and I listen to whatever the mood calls for that particular day. I associate memories and people in my life just by listening to a song. That being said, I've found an artist I want to mention on my blog.

I really really like Jack Johnson. I picked up his new CD the other day and if you have kids it will soon become a staple in the car. He's got a wonderful voice and plays the acoustic guitar. All of the songs are uplifting and fun, or have a good message for all listeners. My favorite song on this CD is "With my own two hands".

With my own two hands-
I can change the world
with my own two hands
make it a better place
with my own two hands
make it a kinder place
with my own two hands

I can make peace on earth
with my own two hands
I can clean up the earth
with my own two hands
I can reach out to you
with my own two hands

That's just part of the song, but you get the jist. I just love it. I also recommend the album before this one called "In Between Dreams".



Another excellent mellow CD. I put it up there with John Mayer, Coldplay and David Gray.
What kind of music are you listening to now? What is your all time favorite CD? I'm always interested in hearing about new music, so feel free to share.