Honestly

February 23, 2011

I am asked "how am I doing?" quite a few times. Do you really want the answer? Really? I mean, honestly, I am doing okay all things considered. My husband is overseas, I have 2 girls that are 11 and 5, and I have a 75 lb. dog. I'm trying to homeschool my children, run the media room, and find a replacement for the pantry.

My husband, the one I love, the one I rely on, is overseas working so that we can pay off debt. He's always been my better half. He's calm when I'm angry. He's rational, I'm not. When I'm scared, he calms me down. He loves me. No matter what.

I miss him.

Sweet Pea fell tonight. She slipped down about 3 or 4 steps and banged her head. I've got her up right now to watch her for a concussion. But this is where I need my other half. I'm worried about her. I need him here.

If you want to ask me about how I'm doing, then be prepared for me to answer honestly. I might tell you that we're adjusting. I might tell you about how I can't sleep at night, but still have to get up earlier. I might tell you about the stress headaches I've been having. I might tell you about how the girls can't seem to get along and seem to be fussing all. the. time. I might even tell you about how I can't even begin to watch (or read) the news, because my stomach starts twisting in knots with worry about Dale.

I really am getting tired of people asking me "How are you doing?" and not wanting to hear how I really am.

Honestly.... I'm fine.

Hugs,

Melinda

Cleaning up

I don't normally post pictures of myself. After all, I started this blog so my family in Arkansas could keep up with my growing girls in Georgia.

Sweet Pea and I were cleaning up their bedroom the other day, and I decided to have a little fun. This is so uncharacteristic of me, that Sweet Pea took a picture.

We had a good day.
Hugs,
Melinda

February 20, 2011

I don't really have too much to say other than we had a good day at church today, and a good life group tonight. I love our church family.

Hugs,

Melinda

Realization

February 19, 2011

Today has been a fairly long day. Sweet Pea had a sleepover last night with one of her best friends, J-Lo. In order to give Sweet Pea some of the space and responsibility she craves as a growing "tween," I had Little Bit spend the night in bed with me.

That alone made for a long night, but in the middle of the night, right after Dale called to tell me he was in Germany, J-Lo came downstairs and told me she was having trouble sleeping. This was around 12:30.

But to top it off, when I was getting ready for the day, Sweet Pea and Little Bit decided to start arguing. Not just simple siblings fussing, but down and out arguing!

And I realized what the differences are. No, not in my girls. With Dale's first deployment, I had never lived alone before, and I had to learn to rely on God. With Dale's second deployment, I had to learn that I couldn't do it all by myself, and that sometimes I had to ask for help. That God put people in my path to help me.

Today, I realized that last time, Sweet Pea was 6 and Little Bit was a newborn. Really, all I had to worry about for the most part was their physical needs. I did have a bit of sibling rivalry to deal with, but there wasn't a whole lot of that. Today I realized, that is not the case this time.

Sweet Pea will be 12 next month. Little Bit is 5, almost 6. Sweet Pea is a "tween"-ager and going through all the emotions and feelings and hype that goes with it. And Little Bit is her mirror, learning and doing everything her big sister does.

It seems like what I'm supposed to learn this time is how to take care of their emotional needs. Which is hard, because I don't always know how to take care of my own emotional needs. I think I see more time in prayer this time, more reliance on God, and more asking for help.

I guess I'm just getting it out. I don't really expect any comments. I just need to put my feelings down. Anyway... If you think about it, remember us in prayers. It's going to be a long year.

Oh, one thing happened that did make me smile. Nana woke me up around 5 this morning to go out. After we got back, and I had crawled back into bed, Little Bit sort of woke up. Nana realized she was in bed with me and got VERY excited to see her. It was really cute and funny.

Hugs,

Melinda

Obedience Training

February 18, 2011

Today has been a good day. I turned my alarm off this morning, and I got to sleep in.

All the way to 7:00! lol

Actually, it's not that bad. Considering I usually get up around 6:30 or so, that's not too bad for me. It means I got just enough extra sleep to function without a sleep headache today. Well, and the fact that Dale was my alarm clock today. :D

We went to Waterfall Park today with some good friends and walked around the park and lake. It was a good long walk for us. I found that Nana does like to jog. She would have jogged further, but my legs started hurting. Shin splints are not fun. But I feel like that will be better with the more exercise we get.

The good part about having such a nice long walk is that Nana was worn out when we went to obedience class tonight! LOL Tonight we talked about walking on a loose leash and informal greeting people. Unfortunately, Nana is a large and strong dog and likes to pull, so we invested in something called a gentle leader. The thing is AMAZING!

First off, we are just going to be using it for walking, or store visits. It's not the kind of thing you leave on a dog. But it makes walking with Nana so much incredibly easier. By the end of the hour, she was walking right beside me, and she wasn't barking at any other dogs. It was great.

I know Dale was leaving the states today. I'm not sure where he is as of this writing, but he's been in my thoughts and prayers all day. Plus, I'm hoping he's got a stopover somewhere interesting, so he can send us an interesting postcard. ;)

Well, Sweet Pea is having a sleepover tonight and Little Bit is going to bed soon. Plus, that walk made me tired....

Goodnight!

Hugs,

Melinda

Lazy day

February 17, 2011

Today has been a lazy day. The weather has been really warm, around 70-75 degrees. I have all the windows open. Little Bit has had a play date all afternoon. Sweet Pea and I had potato soup for lunch, watched a movie, and cleaned up the toys! Literally.

We pulled out Barbie dolls and made sure they all had clothes. We pulled out Littlest Pet Shop and Zoobles, stuffed animals, a few baby dolls, and Build-A-Bear clothes. But everything else, and I mean EVERYTHING, went into a black trash bag. 4 of them to be exact. And we're not talking the little ones. We're talking about the 30 gallon ones!

Sweet Pea has to finish organizing her library, and there may be a bit of organizing in the toy boxes still, but for the most part... the room is clean! :D I think the girls will be a lot happier.

Now, I'm just relaxing, watching Netflix, and hanging out. Today, I'm happy to be here.

Hugs,

Melinda

February 16, 2010

This has been an interesting day. I didn't sleep real well last night. I seem to take a while to get into a "normal" sleeping routine with Dale gone. It's just not the same without him here. But not sleeping well translates into a rough start to my morning. I'm just not a morning person.

Which is why when ADT got here for an installation this morning at 8:07, I was surprised. Usually, when a company gives you a slot (8 to 10, 12 to 4, 8 to 12, etc) I tend to be around that entire time. More often than not, they will show up at the back end of that slot. My slot today was 8 to 10, and the technician showed up at 8:07. Woohoo! Oh, and the technician let Sweet Pea watch and explained things to her. He was very efficient and very polite.

We gave Nana the last of her antibiotic today. Which is good. I was getting tired of getting it down her. She figured out how to get it out of the hot dog. I had to mix it up in some mashed potatoes to get it down her.

There's mud. A lot of mud. My white dog will come in mud colored from running in the backyard with Sweet Pea. I'm ready for some grass back there. Not to mention Sweet Pea's and Little Bit's snow boots. Apparently Little Bit got stuck in the mud.

I did something brave. Well for me at least. I made a phone call that I was dreading, and it all came out okay. At least so far.

We put our maps up. I got two brand new maps at Office Max. One is a map of the USA, and one is a map of the world. My goal is to ask people to send us postcards. Whenever we get a postcard, we will put a pin in that location. I'm actually very excited about this project. My hope is that Little Bit will understand exactly how far away Daddy is.

Which reminds me. I need to go mark off another day on the calendar wall.

I couldn't figure out how to do a countdown of days that Dale will be gone so Little Bit could see and understand. Last time, we did a jellybean jar, but it turns out that Sweet Pea didn't remember it at all. I was thinking paper chains, but I couldn't figure out where to put them. The media room at church had all these paper squares cut out for a project, about 2x3 inches. They are up on our dining room wall. They are semi color coded. They are in rows by months. And we are marking them off one day at a time. Because that's the only way I'll get through this. I'll try to get a good picture later.

Well, I'm fairly tired tonight. I want to go take the dog back out before I fall asleep. I'll talk to you later, loves. Thanks for listening. Sometimes, all I need to do is just ramble and get my thoughts out. But you don't mind, do you?

Love and Hugs,

Melinda

The saga of the TV

Sometime around the start of last year (2010), I purchased from Wal-Mart an Emerson TV/DVD combo, fairly similar to this one. I didn't use it too frequently. It was downstairs in the basement, because that was going to be my "workout area," and I was going to watch TV or do exercise videos. When that didn't work out too well, we decided to move it up to our bedroom. Keep in mind that we don't have cable. We watched videos on it.

Roughly six months after I purchased it, the TV stopped working. It wouldn't turn on it all. We followed all the troubleshooting in the owner's manual, because, yes, geek that I am, I still had that. When that didn't work, we called the customer service number in the very little print at the very back of the manual.

"No problem!" they said. "Send it in. We'll fix it." Okay. Well, first I should have known something would be wonky when they asked did I want the tracking number sent to me via email or snail mail, and when I chose snail mail, it got sent by email. Okay... that's a small problem. I just had to wait a little before I could get to the UPS store to send it off.

Then I realized that we were going on vacation. I called the company on October 1 and gave them my reference number and said, "I would like to put a 10 day hold on my TV. We're going on vacation and I don't want it delivered while we're gone." I was put on hold, and then told that the department that would look at it wouldn't be able to get to it for 10 days anyway, and not to worry.

We came home on October 11. No TV. I thought, I'll give them a bit, because of things like shipping time and actual working on my TV time. Then I gave them another week. Still no TV.

So I called back. "Could you please tell me when I can expect my TV back?" "Oh, that ticket's been closed, because we show it's been delivered."

{insert jaw dropping here} DO WHAT? According to UPS, the package was delivered on October 6 and left on the front porch. No, there was no where to "hide it." No, the person taking care of my cat did not pick it up. No, it was not delivered to my neighbors. Personally, I think it grew legs.

The customer service at Emerson, which I think isn't actually Emerson, but some other company, advised me to call UPS and start a trace. So I called UPS. Who told me that the company had to call to start the trace. We literally went round and round and round on who is responsible for starting this trace on this TV and who is liable for it. Over 10 phone calls to both companies. It got to the point that both Dale and I got so frustrated with over two months of phone calls that we just let it sit for awhile.

I was hoping that he would try to call again before he left, but he didn't. In case you didn't know, I HATE talking on the phone. While I can do a lot of the paperwork of an administrative assistant, answering the phones would just drive me insane. Reason 34 of why I'm thankful to be a stay at home mom.

But I did it. I got a very nice lady named Felicia at UPS who helped me out today. She even tried calling the customer service for me. When that didn't work, I was able to figure out the conference calling on my phone and get them on the line.

The product, when it was working, was a very good product. I really liked the space saving design of the TV. I really liked the TV.

The customer service however....

Let's just say I will think VERY carefully before purchasing another Emerson TV or using UPS again. But that's just my 2 cents worth.

Hugs,

Melinda

Nana

This is our new dog, Nana. She's a Saint Bernard mix. Which means she's a bit smaller than a purebred Saint. Regardless, she's bigger than I thought of when I first said "how about a dog?"

The funny thing is that all of my photos of her are on my phone. I have yet to take a picture with a "real" camera! LoL

Anyway, this is our newest family member. Meet Nana.

Hugs,
Melinda

A chocolate kind of day

February 15, 2011

Today has been shaping up to be a chocolate kind of day. You know the kind. Where things start to go wrong from the very first. First, I did NOT want to get out of bed. That happens a lot when I stay up too late. Like now. It's only 10:51, but my body is saying, "go to bed. Go to sleep. Get the rest you need." I might regret staying up this late in the morning.

Maybe. Personally, I think I need to get my feelings out.

Second, Sweet Pea comes downstairs and says, "Today, I do NOT like the cat very much." Long story short, she didn't get nearly the amount of sleep she needs. I sent her back to bed. Oh, the joys of being homeschooled! :D

Third, on the way to take Little Bit to preschool, somehow, I managed to catch every. single. red. light. in. town.

Fourth, when I was helping a friend, Sweet Pea called me on Skype, and we couldn't connect very well. I was afraid she really needed me. We simply have to do something different on the phone situation. I'm not comfortable leaving her without any form of communication.

Fifth, got a note from the bank that we had overdrawn an account right before we got paid. Which wouldn't be a big deal, but with a different account over $200 overdrawn, it was kind of a pain.

Oh, and sixth, the reason that account is overdrawn is because that one pesky customer of Propel IT STILL hasn't sent the check. There's this whole big mix-up about some websites, and they want Dale to fix it. Which he can't. It's not all his fault. But.... I digress.

And I also found out that Dale lost a family friend this weekend. He lost a battle with cancer, and kidney disease.

The good news today is that Dale has called several times. He actually calls several times a day if he can. We both have webcams this time, and we've both got Skype set up, so we can actually see each other while we talk. It's been nice. I hope he can still do that overseas.

Nana seems to be doing really well with the training. I'm trying to get a longer time on "Watch Me." I think I may be using the same cue for "Watch Me" and non-verbal "Sit," but I'm also not sure it matters as much. I'll need to remember to ask the trainer.

Well, I'm falling asleep while typing. Plus, this much typing sort of hurts my fingers. Have a good night. See you in the morning.

Hugs,

Melinda

WOW!

Wow, time has flown. This has been a busy busy time in my life. Quite frankly, I get wrapped up in Facebook and forget to post here.

But there have been some changes in my life. What some would consider "Big" changes. And I feel the need to post again. I'm going to attempt some sort of a diary dialog in order to get my thoughts organized.

Let's start with

December 24, 2010

Wow. Dale and I were talking about finances. Again. And again, I told him that I didn't think the one customer of Propel IT Systems was worth it, that they were taking advantage of his good guy nature, and that he was worth more, a lot more, than he is currently making. He showed me an email he received. It's from an ITT recruiter. They want him to submit a resume.

December 27, 2010

Oh CRAP! Literally. It looks like a pipe has broken and all the sewage is bubbling up out of the ground. The good news is that the ground is frozen. For now. It seems to have stopped. For now. It makes the idea of applying with ITT look more appealing. What harm could there be in submitting a resume? What's the worse they could do? Say no?

January 4, 2011

Dale had a phone interview today. It was a technical interview to see if he knew all the stuff he said he knew in his resume. Not only did the person tell him he had one of the highest scores he's ever seen, he did a second test for a security position, and made something like a 74% on that one, without even trying! LOL He's so smart. If he studied, I know he'd get the certifications he needs for that job, too.

January 10, 2011

Dale's application was denied? Well, sort of. It was more of a miscommunication. The technical testing interviewer somehow sent the application for the security position, not the system admin job that Dale applied for. It's all been worked out. If I could only get Dale to calm down and stop bugging the guy. God's going to take care of it. God has always taken care of us.

January 14, 2011

Oh, this is a good one. They are trying to decide which job to offer him. He doesn't have the necessary qualifications for the one, but he's close. Real close. And it seems like a tailor made position for him. The funny thing is that I don't think he's ever considered something like it before. Now we just have to wait out the weekend to see what the decision is.

January 17, 2011

Dale was offered a position. He was offered a System Administrator position. I think it's alright for me to say it's in Afghanistan, but I won't say more than that. He will be supporting our troops. I don't want to endanger them, or him.

The rest is basically a blur of paperwork, certifications, medical records, dental exams, and wish lists. And snow. Lots of snow. I do know that he got a call on January 29 asking what he thought about leaving on February 12 for the training in country. Which was a heck of a lot sooner than either of us imagined. We were thinking the end of February or the beginning of March.

February 5, 2011

Dale and I have been talking dogs. I mentioned that I was thinking about getting a dog instead of a fancy security system. Dale said he would be fine with both. So we started looking. I woke up this morning thinking of names for one we had found earlier this week. Dale said, "let's look a little more." I'm glad he did. We found Nana in a different shelter. She's PERFECT!

February 10, 2011

Tomorrow. Tomorrow is the day I don't want to come. He leaves tomorrow. We were going to have date night, but instead decided to have family night. It was a good choice I think. Neither one of us can sleep. Instead, we talk into the wee hours of the night.

February 11, 2011

AM: Not so very happy birthday Dale. I didn't make it out of the airport like I wanted. I wanted to make it to the car before I started sobbing. I didn't get that far. Sweet Pea held onto me, and I held onto her. Thankfully, Little Bit doesn't really understand yet. One question keeps running through my brain. Are we out of our ever loving minds for doing this? We have GOT to be crazy. How on earth am I going to do this again?

PM: Obedience class for Nana. She is stronger than she looks! Please, dear trainer Karen. Please don't tell us we have to come to private lessons instead. She will calm down. I promise?

February 13

We had tears in church this morning. Going on.

February 14

We went to Pizza Street with some of our homeschool friends. When will my children learn to think before speaking? Especially when the words they use could hurt someone! Both of them said things that they shouldn't have. Both of them hurt other people.

But at least I didn't lose my cool. I think we... or at least I had a growing experience as a parent today.

Okay, I know that this is a really long post. If you've stuck with me this far, thanks. My plan is to try to write more often. I want to detail this new adventure.

One: I've never really had a dog before. My family did have an Old English Sheepdog when I was younger, but looking back, I don't think we took good care of her.

Two: I've got to talk about my feelings about Dale being gone again.

So, I'm going to go do a post for today, maybe include a picture, and then I'll sign off. Thanks for walking through me with this.

Psalm 46:10 "Be still and know that I am God. I will be honored by every nation. I will be honored throughout the world." Even Afghanistan.

Hugs,

Melinda