Crime and Punishment

Honestly, I read and watch the news and more often than not, I catch myself wondering what in the world has happened to our once great nation – and great citizens? It’s as if a “lazy, irresponsible, ignorant, selfish bomb” went off and infected at least half our population – if not more.

There are so many things going on today in America that completely sickens me, I’m really not quite sure where exactly to start my rant. To keep myself from rambling too badly, I plan on tackling each issue separately. So, in no particular order:

Crime and Punishment (or the lack of)
I watch the crime shows on TV like American Justice, Notorious, COPS, 48 Hours, Cold Case Files (on A & E, not the “drama” television series) etc. More often than not, I am completely disgusted by the eventual sentencing. 25 years to life for raping and killing two women. Life in prison for killing 8 or more women. Of course, often, life in prison means several decades and then laws will change and these scum of the earth will find themselves in front of a parole board.

The death sentence in this country, for the most part, is a joke. Look at Charles Manson and his murdering followers. Death Penalty – yet, there they all sit some forty years later. Sentences commuted to life in prison – all on the tax payers’ dime. However, they too get in front of a parole board….how anyone who faced the death penalty at one time could possibly end up in front of a parole board is criminal in itself – and makes our justice system look like a farce.

The death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment? No, slaughtering people in their own homes – killing a pregnant woman while she pleads for the life of her unborn baby, kidnapping an eight year old, raping and burying her ALIVE is cruel and unusual. The death penalty (when it’s actually carried out) is probably too easy.

I think a lot of Americans feel that we’ve taken our justice system and turned it on its head. Victims have NO rights compared to the criminals. Someone drags you from your car at gun point and steals your vehicle? They might see the inside of a jail cell. Heck, just watch a couple of episodes of COPS and you’ll see an officer pull up a suspect’s record and it’ll be screen after screen of convictions and arrests – and there the turd is, out on the street to claim more victims instead of tossed into a cell where he belongs and the key thrown away.

Take a good look at California and you’ll see what will eventually take over our entire country. The police chase a suspect running from them in a vehicle, some innocent person trying to go to work or home from work is injured during the pursuit and all of a sudden, instead of the suspect being blamed – there are idiots lining the street cheering the scum on…and the politicians screaming at the police for CHASING A CRIMINAL for crying out loud. In some cities, the police are no longer allowed to even chase a fleeing vehicle. Instead, the same people who screamed to stop pursuits will be the same people screaming the police “let” criminals get away when these same fleeing twits end up victimizing them or their families when they commit another crime. And, they will commit another crime.

*sigh*

So, I say we need to toughen our laws and once again make criminals face consequences – stiff consequences. Here are a few of my ideas:
* Run from the police in a vehicle? Face attempted murder charges for every occupied car you hit, assault with a deadly weapon charges for people having to dodge your sorry ass – a charge for each person in a car that was in danger of being hit. Run those charges up – make mandatory minimums and here’s a concept – make people SERVE the exact time they are charged with! Get 15 years? Your butt will sit in a cell (or preferably a hot tent like the Arizona sheriff started) for the FULL fifteen years from the date sentenced.

* Assault one of our nation’s finest? Automatic LIFE in prison. If these fucks will hit a uniformed officer – what do you think they will do to you or your family without hesitation? I don’t care if it’s just a tussle and the officer breaks a nail. LIFE in prison – no parole. Shoot at an officer or use any kind of weapon against them (whether anyone is hurt or not), automatic death penalty. These men and women have to deal with abuse on a daily basis from the worst society has to offer. The least we can do, as a law abiding society, is to let them know we stand behind them 110% and will not stand quietly by and allow them to be at the mercy of the scum in our society.

* Gangs. Sheesh…if we think it’s bad now, give it another twenty years. Not only does every large city in our country face these thugs, even smaller cities are being taken over. Along with our home-grown gang bangers, our ever growing illegal immigrant population is now importing some of the most deadly gangs the world has to offer. If we thought the Mafia was dangerous and enacted RICO to combat them – we need to take a look at these gangs and find a way to wipe them out too. At least with the Mafia of a generation or two ago, they didn’t target innocent civilians. It was pretty rare for someone who was not involved to wind up hurt or killed. With the gangs of today, killing is as easy to them as deciding you’re the wrong color (or happen to be wearing the wrong color) to walk on “their” street. Never mind the fact that they are unemployed, pay no taxes and have done the LEAST of any citizen to say they own anything – much less a street. They do own it though…they own it by control and fear – and it’s time we stand together and say enough is damn enough. There has to be something we can do to destroy them without destroying our Constitution. If we keep doing nothing, even the smallest towns will find themselves on the wrong end of a losing battle.

* Sexual Assault. Let’s face it, whether it’s against a child or an adult – not much can impact a victim of a crime more profoundly than sexual assault. None of the victims will EVER be the same. Why do we ever let these animals out of prison? I’m fine with the death penalty on this one too – but I’d settle for life with no parole – ever. Invading some one’s body…gosh I cannot imagine what it must do to a person. Victims of home invasions often never feel safe in the home it happened and end up moving. What about sexual assault victims? Where do they go to EVER feel secure, to ever feel safe? For impacting another human’s soul on such a violent scale – the criminal should have to pay an extremely high price and never be given the opportunity to harm another person.

I decided to scale this back and only cover crime and punishment… Originally this post was titled, “I’m Sick of the Nanny State” and I’d planned to vent about the biggest problems with our current crippling of our Constitution, starting with crime and the lack of punishment and ending with the FREE society – free as in, “I want everything free and I have a RIGHT to FREE food, health care, housing” et al. But, think I’ll stop here and tackle the other subjects later. Not like they are going anywhere unfortunately.

One last thought though – if I could afford to live in Florida, I’d be packing us up and moving us there. I like their stance on gun rights and the fact the state government realizes that law abiding citizens have A RIGHT to defend themselves from the thugs of society – including the right to use deadly force. My state is coming around, but unfortunately, with a demoRAT in the governor’s chair, they are coming around much too slowly. It’s much more important to make sure our illegal immigrants have IN STATE tuition than to pass laws that protect a law abiding citizens’ right to defend themselves, their homes and their property. *sigh* Just typical…

Our Baby Had Surgery

Since we found out in January he’d need the surgery, I’ve been a nervous wreck. I’m so relieved that it’s now behind us and that everything went so well.

We found out there was a problem when the school sent a note home this winter that he’d done poorly on a hearing test. I talked with the school and was told that a lot of the children had similar results due to all of the cold/flu bugs going around at the time and not to worry too much.

I scheduled an appointment with our doc here in town and took him in – as the note about the hearing test suggested. Our doc said he had fluid in both ears and gave him a course of antibiotics. He wanted to see him again in two weeks.

We’d noticed prior to the hearing test that he wasn’t hearing well, but he’d been sick with a cold/cough off and on for several weeks, so until the hearing test I’d rationalized it that way. After the hearing test and our visit with the doctor, I thought the second course of antibiotics a month and a half after he’d had antibiotics when he’d had the bad cough would clear it up.

The two weeks passed and I took our little guy back to the doc. Unfortunately, he still had fluid in both ears. Our doctor said we’d try one more course of antibiotics and if that didn’t clear it up, we’d need to go see an ENT doc. As you can tell by the title of this entry, the last try didn’t work and we ended up having to drive our baby an hour and a half to another town to see the specialist. This doc was the closest one to us that takes Tricare. Just hard to believe with two larger towns within 35 minutes of us, no ENT docs in our area take our insurance.

So at the end of January, we made the trek to the specialist to see what he suggested. He looked at both ears and said they were full of fluid. He put a camera in his nose and said his adenoids were taking up 50% of the space – so he suggested we put the tubes in his ears and have his adenoids removed due to son’s history. That history being – daughter can bring home a cold and within a week son not only has the cold, but he has a barking cough to go with it. EVERY TIME he would get sick, he’d get this horrible sounding cough. Doc thought removing the adenoids would more than likely help so he wouldn’t constantly be draining stuff into his ears and throat.

So, Sunday night came too quickly. Daughter spent the night with our friends and their daughter. Husband, son and I made a two hour trek to the clinic where the ENT doc performs the surgery. The clinic an hour and a half from here is new and they are not doing surgeries there just yet. Anyhow, the surgery was scheduled for 7:30 a.m. Monday, March 10th. Since it was so early in the morning, we decided to go down the night before, find the clinic and then find a hotel close to it.

We stayed in one of the Suites hotels – can’t remember now which one (yeah, I handle stress real well lol). At any rate, THE WORST beds we’ve ever slept on. They were way too soft – the kind of soft where a mattress is worn out – not a pillow-top soft kind of mattress. We were burning up on the 3rd floor, but then froze when we turned the air on. Just a miserable night. It felt so awful having one of our children with us and our other baby two hours away. I love our friends – they are such great people and their children are the same ages as our children, so our children are friends too. But, it still felt terrible without daughter with us and not five minutes after we dropped her off I think husband, son and I all wished she was with us.

Anywho, after surgery was pretty rough. The surgery itself took only ten minutes according to the doc. While they took him to the first recovery area, we go back to a little room where the doc comes in and tells us how it went. He said that everything went great. He didn’t have hardly any fluid in his right ear, but had quite a bit in the left. We asked how long until he’s hearing better and he said he should be able to notice a difference as soon as he wakes up. We ask a few more questions which he answers in great detail (we really like this doctor) and he tells us that as soon as he wakes up, they’ll come get us and we can come back to the second recovery area and be with him.

Husband and I sit back down in the lobby and about thirty minutes later they call us back. We’re taken to a long hall that has these little cubby like areas off to the left. Each has a hospital recliner in them, a blood pressure/heart rate machine and an area for a child’s size bed. Towards the end of the hall they show us into our little cubby and pull the curtain open. About that time, I see them – no, the first thing is I HEAR my baby – and then I see two nurses pushing a bed around a corner and down the hall to us. Son is laying on his side in the bed and trying to sit up – all the while screaming, “MOMMY! MOMMY! I WANT MY MOMMY!!!”

Now, you have to know my children to know how out of character this is. My babies are pretty well behaved. They say yes sir and no ma’am. Since they were two years old, I’ve not had to tell them to settle down in a restaurant – much less in a store and especially not in a doctor’s office or a hospital.

So, to hear my baby screaming in terror for his Mom, put my heart into my throat and it honestly scared me to death. I’d never seen him like that – ever. Not to mention the fact my babies call me Momma and haven’t called me Mommy since they were itty bitty…

They get him to our little cubby area and I tell him Daddy and I are right here, that it’s OK. He says gasping, “Oh Mommy, I woke up and couldn’t see you and I was so scared. Oh Mommy….” I tell him that we’re right here now and Daddy and I aren’t going anywhere. At this point, I guess it dawned on him that THE MAN was in the house LMAO and he says, “Oh, Oh Daddy…I couldn’t find you and Mommy.” Husband says, “It’s OK buddy. We’re all together now.”

The nurse asks him if he wants to sit with me and he says yes, so I sit down in the recliner and they put my baby in my lap. He still has an IV in his hand and they attach a blood pressure cup to his left arm and clip a heart monitor on his toe. He lays his head on my shoulder and doses for a minute and wakes back up and starts to get upset again, “Mommy, Momm…” I tell him that I have him and he’s OK…just to lay right here on Momma and he’ll start feeling better in a few minutes when more of the anesthesia wears off. He closes his eyes and settles back down and I keep talking to him about any and everything I can think of, just so he can hear my voice.

After about ten minutes he wakes up a little more and says his head hurts bad. The cute little red headed nurse is in there and she asks if he’d like something to drink and he says yes. Then he says, “Oh I think I’m going to be sick…oh my tummy, I’m going to throw up Momma…”

The nurse hands us a plastic hospital issue puke holder and my baby throws up blood two or three times. I tell her that I told the staff that I’m a HUGE puker after being put under and I worried he would be to. She says that they’d given him a phenergan suppository while he was under. Our body won’t digest blood though, so he probably is sick due to swallowing the blood and once he gets it up, he should be fine. He says his head really hurts, so the nurse leaves and comes back with a syringe and a cup of water with a straw. She gives him the medicine in the syringe by mouth and tells him to drink the water to help get the taste out of his mouth.

And that’s when things get scary.

He lays his head back down on my shoulder, closes his eyes and doses back off. Meanwhile, the blood pressure/heart machine starts making a funny noise. Husband, the nurse and I look at it and see that his heart rate is just getting higher and higher. The nurse walks closer to the machine, clicks a few buttons to reset it, changes toes on the heart rate monitor and it counts for a second and starts making the noise again as it registers his heart rate at 191 beats per minute. The nurse says she’ll be right back and husband and I sit there with our baby and watch this monitor count the beats and make the loud noise every few seconds.

A few minutes later, the nurse is back and she has the doctor who put him under with her. We’d met this nice lady prior to the surgery when she’d stopped in to talk with us about putting him under. She tells the nurse that we need to wheel a bed back in here (when they’d put him in my lap, they’d removed the bed). The nurse finishes hooking up a bag of saline to his IV and leaves the room. Honestly, I can’t really remember what the doc did from there…I think she listened to his chest with her stethoscope, but I can’t be sure. Husband mentions that everything was fine until he was given the medicine by mouth. That we’re not sure if that has anything to do with it, but it wasn’t long after he got the medicine that the machine started making the loud noise.

Soon the nurse was back with a bed and she reaches down and picks my baby up and puts him back in the bed. She gets some sticky round things and puts two on his chest and one one his back and hooks that up to the blood pressure/heart rate machine. The nurse had done a print out of his heart rate prior to going to get the doc and after hooking him up to the machine with the sticky things, they printed out another. The doc said to let him get the entire bag they’d hooked up to his IV and she’d be back to check on him shortly.

Son was now more awake and talking normal – without the gasping fear sound to his voice. The nurse went and got him a warm blanket and he snuggled quietly as he talked about how scared he’d felt when he first woke up. I told him it probably had a lot to do with being so groggy from being put to sleep for the surgery…that I always wake up feeling all weird and shaky from surgery. I told him it was normal and the more awake you get, the less you feel like that. He agreed and said he was sorry for yelling, but he was scared and just wanted to see us. I told him it was quite all right – that I’m sure everyone understands and there’s nothing to be sorry for. We wanted to see him really bad too .

*sigh* My sweet little boy…

By the time the bag was three quarters empty, his heart rate was back to normal. The nurse came back to check on him and said he looked really good. We asked her what had caused his heart rate to go up so high and she said she wasn’t sure. She said what had concerned her so much was the fact it had jumped up so high and he wasn’t crying or anything. Him laying quietly on me and his heart rate increasing like it was sent off the warning flags.

When the bag was empty and his heart rate had been normal for a while, she said she could take out the IV and he could get dressed. He was so good when she was taking out the IV…just quietly said, “OW, OW, OW” and then asked why the band-aid lol. We helped him off the bed after she’d removed the round sticky things and he got dressed. He said he was PAST ready to go home ha!

We arrived around 7:15 and we were out of there by 9:45. We had to drive quite a ways to pick up his prescriptions. Where the surgical clinic was located looked pretty ritzy. All the homes were in gated communities and they had high priced little stores in all the strip malls. A winery/steakhouse, no Wal-Mart, but a Super Target that I didn’t even know existed ha! Well, as we headed south towards the other hospital where the pharmacy was located, you could tell there was a BIG LINE between the rich area and the shithole area. A four lane road separated them. On the north side, you had gated communities, everyone driving $50,000+ cars. On the south side, you had land yachts with bling, beaters driving on three tires and a donut, run down dumpy houses, dirty looking people hanging out on street corners etc. I noticed something else in the huge contrasts between the two areas. In the rich area, the speed limit on the main four lane road was 40 to 45 mph. Once you crossed over to the shitty area, the speed limit dropped to 35 mph. I told husband about it and wondered if there are any statistics that show there are more wrecks in crappy areas and fewer in richer areas. It would make sense I guess – when you drive a beater you don’t care where you park in a parking lot because one more ding isn’t going to make that big of a difference (yep, I’ve driven a beater lol). If someone tail gates, you think “Go ahead hit me, I need the insurance money.” When you have a nice vehicle, you park farther down so hopefully you don’t get some idiot opening their door on your car and leaving a dent and when someone almost hits you, the wordy durds fly… Anyhow, just wondered about that.

We arrived home around 1 pm. Little guy and his Dad had some lunch and then took almost a two hour nap. I woke them up at 3pm so we could go pick up big sister from school and hit the local grocery store. We’d promised little guy he could pick out any kind of ice cream he wanted.

Other than his throat being sore when he swallowed, he said he felt fine. He also said he could hear and breathe a lot better! I hadn’t thought about how the adenoids being removed would feel to him. He just couldn’t get over how much easier it was for him to breathe when he was drinking his juice. Instead of having to put the glass away from his mouth after he swallowed so he could take a breath, now he could breathe through his nose in between swallows – and he thought that was a miracle lol.

So, although it’s been stressful these past few weeks leading up to this surgery and we’re all glad it’s over, we are also glad we went ahead and had the surgery done. Not only is he hearing better, he’s breathing better. We couldn’t have asked for a better outcome.

We’ll go back in a month to see the doc and hopefully that will be the end of any ear issues for our baby. The tubes will eventually fall out on their own, so he won’t have to go through another surgery to have them removed. I’m hoping with spring almost here, we’ve seen the last of the cold/flu season. If so, hopefully both our babies will stay healthy and give our little guy’s body time to recoup from not only the surgery, but all the bugs his little system has been fighting since October.

I’m just so glad it’s over. I was finally able to sleep last night. I think it was the first time in over a week I slept more than an hour and a half without waking up. I’m still pretty tired though. Hopefully getting a few more nights of good sleep will get me back to feeling normal instead of being tired and worn out all day every day. It’s definitely time for things to get back to normal around here…

History – and the Repeat of…

Daughter had a school project this month. Each student had to pick one non-living person who made an impact on history and do a report on them. A girl after my own heart – she chose my all time hero: General George S. Patton.

She came home today and said she’d finished her report. While I was cooking dinner she started telling me about a book she was reading. We’d ordered several books from the Scholastic’s paper the school sends home. It was a collection of three, all having to do with the Holocaust. One being The Diary of Anne Frank and two others that told the stories of other victims of the Holocaust. She was telling me about the girl having to hide in a trunk and how members of the family hiding her were wanting the Mother to throw her out afraid they’d all be killed for hiding a Jew.

We talked a bit about how frightening it must have been to live through that – and how devastating it had to be to watch your entire family die in a concentration camp with you being the only survivor. We then talked about how Patton had been so disgusted by what he saw when the Third Army liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp, he forced the locals to tour the camp so they could see with their own eyes what their complacency had allowed…

Daughter comes by her love of history honestly. My father and I are both big history buffs – but especially military history. I don’t know enough to be dangerous compared to him, but I hope that daughter will continue with her love of history. As I told her this evening, the importance of knowing history is to keep history from repeating itself. If only more people would wake up and see the writing on the wall.

Yesterday, GuyK linked to a story everyone should read. The story concerns a 12 year old girl being beaten in North London while her attackers screamed the question, “ARE YOU JEWISH?!”. Go on, click on the link and read the story – and know that while this happened on a public bus and, despite the screams of her friend, none of the other passengers came to help.

Reminds me of entire towns seeing railway car after railway car of Jews being taken into concentration camps and none leaving -yet NONE of the towns’ people giving it a second thought. As GuyK quotes on his blog and, I’ll quote here: “Wherever anti-Semitism goes unchecked, the persecution of others is not far behind.”

Sadly, the majority in this country are more interested in voting in the person who promises them the most government sanctioned free crap – while ignoring an alarming world-wide problem. And, for the first time, I’m truly frightened about the future of not only our Republic, but our very lives. If we keep ignoring and negotiating with killers, eventually history will repeat itself – only this time, the Greatest Generation will not exist to rescue the world…

I’ve Caught My Death…

Ok, so that’s a bit dramatic…but honestly I cannot recall being this sick in a long, long time. And to tell you the truth, I couldn’t even begin to explain what in the heck I have. Lets see – there’s the fever that is around 100.8 to 101.4 – if I can get it down below the 100.8, I don’t hurt so bad. Otherwise, everything I have HURTS. My neck hurts, my back hurts, my shoulders – even my legs and ankles of all things. Just feel like shit warmed over…. Other than the aches and fever, my nose is stuffy and that’s about it. I’ve had a cold for the past week – but starting Saturday night the fever kicked in with the body aches that feel as though I’m in some medieval torture device and being pulled apart at the joints.

Husband is doing his “get out of the Army” classes this week. So, he was home late this morning – not having to be on post until 9. So he took the babies to school. I got on the couch around 9:30 I guess. Before he’d left he said I should try to get some sleep since I sat up in the chair all night…just hurt too bad to think about laying down.

So after everyone left this morning, I took some Tylenol cold medicine, some sudafed and get covered up with one of the soft fluffy blankets we have on the couch. I almost get dosed off when the phone rings…it’s my mother. After listening to her bitch for half an hour about my step-brother – I finally get off the phone, use some nose spray and get back on the couch. I get good and asleep – apparently hard asleep since when the phone rang again, I woke up to drool (yep, I have no shame when I’m sick). This time it’s husband. I think, didn’t he tell me to go to sleep? How am I suppose to sleep with him calling? Figure if I hit silent on my phone and just roll back over, he’ll know I’m asleep and try again after lunch. So that’s what I do. Nope, just get back to sleep when the freakin’ phone rings AGAIN half an hour later….I answer it in a very friendly tone: WHAT?

Husband: You able to get any rest?
Bitch: Not with the freakin’ phone ringing every damn 30 minutes. No, can’t say I have…
Husband: I’m sorry, did I wake you? Just was worried and wanted to see how you are feeling.
Bitch: I feel like SHIT…I wish someone would take me out back and shoot me and put me out of my misery.
Husband: Well, I’ll let you go so you can get back to sleep…

Yeah, I was so friendly, but sheesh people. When someone I love is sick I try to give them some space. Not me – Mother’s problems are always more important than anything else, husband was just trying to be nice, but after dealing with my Mother – ughh.

I need a vacation lol. And yes, I called husband back later and apologized for being such an ass. Poor guy….

Of course it’s freezing here today with 15 mph winds. I got off the couch around two planning to go up, get a shower and get ready to pick our babies up from school. I pick up my coffee cup off the end table and start for the kitchen…get half way there and everything goes black. I just sat down in the middle of the dining room. I get back to my chair and sit back down. Standing to take a shower is out. I call my friend and ask if she would mind picking up my babies for me. I was so thankful I didn’t have to get out in the cold….

Now if I can just get a good night’s sleep tonight and hopefully get over whatever the heck it is that I’ve caught. Sheesh…I hate being sick…

He’s HOME – and other updates

Husband finally returned home December 4th. They flew into our state around 10 pm that night and the babies and I made the 35 minute drive to post for the redeployment ceremony scheduled at 12:30 am. Thankfully the speeches were short and we were soon on our way home.

I’m sure the weather change was a shock for all the soldiers who returned home in December. The week after husband’s group returned, we had the huge ice storm hit. Not only did it delay some of the last group returning, those who were already home had the pleasure of getting some real quality time with their families ha! Most everyone in our area lost power. Some had power off and on for three or four days – others lost power completely for the four days. Emergency shelters were set up, hotels that had power were booked solid….

Gosh you should have seen the trees we had down in our small town. It was something to see for sure. Our power was out off and on for three days. The first day, we lost power after midnight and it came back on for three or four hours the next evening. Just long enough for us to get the house warmed up again. The next two days the power was out all day for the most part and then would come back on for a few hours, cut back off, then come back on in four or five hours. It was a HUGE mess and I’m sure it was even harder on the soldiers who weren’t acclimated.

Christmas came and went all too quickly. I had waited on husband to return to do the Christmas shopping for the babies. He was returning early enough in December and I thought we’d have plenty of time to do the shopping together. Well, with the ice storm and the power out – we ended up having to rush to finish up shopping. I enjoyed every second I had with husband and the fact we were able to do all the shopping together, but it sure went by too fast because that week of the storm we weren’t able to do anything but try to stay warm and keep the water pipes in the house from freezing.

Husband’s 30 days of leave also went by too fast. He returned to work last week. A lot of folks are still on leave, so his work schedule, thankfully, isn’t quite normal just yet. We’re still able to enjoy spending some extra time together with PT not part of the schedule and him not working until 7 pm. He’s able to be home in the mornings to take the babies to school on his way to work and be home early enough to help with homework in the afternoons and sit down with us for supper.

Whelp, guess that’ll catch up the ol’ blog here with the latest happenings. Hope everyone’s year is off to a good start!

Bull SHIT….

Check out this article:  In icy Alaska, U.S. Army can be sued over fall

Here’s the great quote of the piece:

An injured woman who slipped in an Alaskan parking lot can sue the federal government for failing to remove snow and ice, a U.S. Court of Appeals ruled on Monday.

Carol Bolt has been permanently disabled since April 1999, when she broke her ankle outside her U.S. Army apartment in Fort Wainwright, Alaska, where winter temperatures fall to as low as -65 F degrees (-54 C).

[RANT-ON]
HERE is the kicker for those of us who have LIVED in Alaska’s interior…IF SHE LIVED ON BASE IT WAS HER RESPONSIBILITY TO KEEP HER SIDEWALKS AND DRIVE CLEAR! So if she slipped it was HER FAULT for not clearing the snow!!

You know how many freaking hours I have shoveled that fucking white shit? FOUR LONG YEARS of shoveling it. Had a brand new baby and a toddler the last two years we lived on base – and left the front door open where I could see them in the little mud room while I tried to keep the sidewalk and drive clear when we’d get five feet of snow in an evening. Yeah FUN – all the while husband was gone being a soldier and I not only raised two babies, I shoveled snow and worked 50 hours a week mostly ALONE. And this lazy ass doesn’t clear her walk and now it’s the government’s job to clear the sidewalks and she gets a freaking payday too?

I’m glad my husband is retiring – the shit that is taking over and the freaking suits allowing them to make me sick.

[/RANT-OFF]…..

Taggers Should be Shot

Ok, so maybe not shot, but I wouldn’t lose sleep over these latest bastards getting a good old fashioned ass-kicking.

Last year (ironically, also in November), I had my first run-in with Taggers. You can read the story as it unfolded:

• What a Morning Part II
• Spray Painting Bandits: Update

I was pretty pleased with not only our local police department’s response, but also the parents who stepped up to make sure their youngsters learned a lesson out of it all.

Now, I’ve mentioned my mid-life crisis car on here before. I sold my muscle car back in 1998 when husband was deployed to the middle east the first time after we were married. We needed the money and my old girl was just sitting in Alabama while we were in Virginia with orders to move to Alaska. It broke my heart to sell her, but at the time, I didn’t have much choice.

So, in August of 2006 when husband talked me into driving a new Mustang GT, I knew better than getting behind the wheel. I knew once I drove that car I’d be in love – and of course, a quick trip up the road and back was enough to convince me this was MY mid-life crisis car heh heh. Thanks to 0% interest courtesty of Ford – we drove her home that afternoon.

Since then, I’ve splurged and had a new stripe kit put on her and hood pins. I’m hoping to get a job in the next year so I can put a $1400 upgrade kit on her (cold air intake, new exhaust system and a computer chip that will bump the horsepower up to around 330) and a new set of rims I have my heart set on. It’s been a real example of control with the extra moola from the deployment not to splurge while husband has been gone heh heh, but I’ve been good and only spent money on oil changes and the hood pins and stripe kit . Here’s a pic I took back in June:

So, November 17th started out like most mornings. I let our dogs out, started some coffee and fixed my babies some breakfast. I finally sit down around 8:15 to enjoy my first cup of coffee when someone comes up on my porch and rings my doorbell. I think it’s probably someone trying to sell something, so I ignore it. Again, they ring the doorbell and the dogs bark like fools. I keep thinking, “Damn, it’s too early in the morning people. I’m still in my PJs and I’m not answering the door. GO AWAY.” Again, they ring the bell…and now I’m ready to tell someone to get off my damn porch – and not in a nice way heh heh.

I get my big dogs outside and go to the door. I’m shocked to see my across the street neighbor standing there. She’s never been ugly to us – but she’s always been stand-off-ish, which is fine with me. Some days she’ll wave when she goes by, some days she won’t. We’ve been here five years and I finally stopped waving regularly after the first couple of months we lived here – never knowing if she’d bother to wave or not be in a great mood and glare lol.

Anyhow, I open the door and she says, “I’m sorry to tell you this, but the bastards got your car last night.”

I said, “OH NO. You’re shittin’ me!”

She says, “I wish I was, but when I got up this morning and looked out – it was the first thing I saw. I knew you’d want to know and call the police.”

I told her I really appreciated her coming over and telling me. And, of course between the stress of husband about to come home and some freakin’ punks SPRAY PAINTING my car, the tears well up. I told her I sure didn’t understand why someone would do this. She said she didn’t either and – she actually gave me a hug. She was so nice to me that morning and I really do appreciate her coming over and letting me know.

I came back in the house and called the police. Just like last year – they were here in minutes. The two officers were so nice and asked if I’d had any problems since yelling at the two boys aggravating a neighbor’s dog. One of the officers was the one who spoke to me a few months back about them. I told him I hadn’t seen them since that day and I’d not seen anything odd. At the time, I was the only car that had been reported, but while they were taking the info from my license and getting the VIN off my car, they got word over the radio of another car that had been tagged about a block away.

I hate for anyone else to have gotten their property damaged too, but at the same time, I was a bit relieved. At least I knew it was a random thing and someone wasn’t targeting our house. On Halloween night, the postal box that sits in the far corner of our yard was spray painted with “JENA 16.” The Post Office sent someone out to replace it because they were afraid it might be in reference to the Jena thing in Louisiana. I have an Alabama flag (and NO it is not the “stars and bars”) hanging from my rear view mirror and my tag has a reference to Alabama. The man replacing the postal box had wondered if it might be due to that. Then to have my car tagged a few weeks later and mine be the only one was making me nervous. It looks like now though that it was a random act.

Here’s a picture of my car after it was sprayed:

I told the policemen I was going to run it up to Ford and see what they suggested. He said he hoped they’d know of something to get it off, but most likely they’d have to repaint it.

It’s now about 9 in the morning and the babies and I are going to Ford. I get up there and park at the service department and go in to see if the guy who set up the work they did on the stripes and all was there. The other gentleman who works in service said he wasn’t there, but asked if he could help me. I told him to look out the door and see what he thought. All he said was, “OH NO….”

I said, “Yep, sucks doesn’t it? But, I didn’t want to let it sit all weekend…thought maybe it would make it worse.”

He said once it dried, it was on there and he didn’t think he could do anything with it. He said to hang on and let him call someone… By now, everyone from the service department was looking at it and shaking their heads and I’m trying to hide tears with my sun glasses on. The mechanic who usually works on my car walked in and said he sure was sorry…

I have to put a plug in here for our local Ford dealership. Their service department is excellent – and EVERYONE who works there is absolutely awesome!

About that time, a lady who is pretty new to Ford walked in and said, “It’s wiping right off! Come see!”

I about fell out of my chair. I couldn’t believe it. She said she thought if this stuff called D-TAR would get road tar off, it might just work on spray paint. She said she figured it wouldn’t hurt to at least try it. And, sure enough – it wiped right off! You would have thought it was shoe polish or something with the way it wiped off after she sprayed the D-TAR stuff on it.

WHEW!!!

Here’s a pic of it after we got home from Ford and running it through the car wash afterwards:

For the next ten days or so, I stayed up late worrying they’d come back. I locked the glass door and left our wood door open. Dakota would lay in front of the door and bark any time anyone walked by. I figured the bastards would ride by and see the spray paint removed so quickly and decide to either key the doors or bust out the windows – or both.

I stopped in to my regular gas station today to fill up the car and the lady in there asked if I knew Ann who worked there. I told her I sure did. She said that Ann’s husband’s truck got tagged last night and the police told her that their vehicle was the third one hit in the last month. The lady told Ann that mine was the first one – and told her how I’d taken it up to Ford and they were able to get it off for me. So hopefully, Ann was able to get the spray paint off their truck too. I usually stop and get a soda every day before I pick up the babies from school, so I’ll see her tomorrow and find out for sure.

Hopefully the police will find out who is doing this soon. Usually someone dumb enough to damage other folks’ property is dumb enough to brag about it too. It’s a small town and word travels fast heh heh.

Preparing for the Return

As this deployment finally nears its end, the preparations will begin in earnest today. I’ve deliberately put off the major house cleaning until this weekend. There are several reasons I decided to wait until almost the last minute. The main reason being, the last two weeks seem to always be the hardest for me. I go from being so excited about seeing him again that it feels as if my heart might explode from beating so hard – to being either short tempered (road rage anyone?) or wanting to cry. The days seem to go from twenty-four hours to seventy-two. Each day is longer than the last and feels as though they may never end. So, putting off the spring cleaning will hopefully help make the weekend go by a lot faster. And, with two children, dogs and a cat – hopefully I’ll only have to vacuum the stairs once heh heh.

Big plans for today though. We’re getting laundry done early so I can take down the living room curtains and wash them. While they are in the wash, I’ll clean the windows – and do a project I’ve been putting off for oh – about a year lol. I’m going to get my trusty caulk gun out and caulk around the window frames. With our house being almost 100 years old, the cold comes right in around the wood trim. Figure while I have the curtains down, it’d be the perfect time finally get around to that caulking job I’ve been procrastinating on.

Husband called last week and the babies and I knew it would be the last time he was able to call. On one hand, we were excited to know we were slowly getting closer to his return, but on the other – not hearing from him is hard.

When husband came home the last time, daughter had done so great through the entire year. We all held it together as best we could and tried to go through the motions of normal life even on the days when we didn’t much want to. The day of his return finally arrived. When the group walked in and daughter saw her Dad, she sat down in the chair, put her face in her little hands and just sobbed. Daughter isn’t much of a crier, so to see her just completely let go of everything she’d held in was hard. And, I felt pretty helpless…all I could do is tell her it was ok, he’s finally home now and we can all take a deep breath…

So, when daughter was fighting tears on the phone with him, I knew she was finally taking that deep breath and letting some of “it” come to the surface. She’s like her Dad and finds it easy to just stuff emotions and not quite deal with them in the moment. When I got back on the phone with husband he was pretty worried about her. I tried to reassure him that it was just the way it works and she’d be ok.

Later that evening, she’d come back downstairs after going to bed and her eyes were all red. She said she didn’t know why she was crying. She sat down in the living room and we had a good talk. I told her it was just what happens when the deployment starts coming to an end. While you’re so excited about the reunion, I guess it allows all the other emotions you’ve felt over the last 15 months to come to the surface too. At month two, five, nine etc. you are focusing on the day to day. You have school work or an upcoming holiday or whatever is going on to focus your mind and energy on. When you near the end though, your mind starts focusing on seeing him again – what you’ll do on the weekends with him home, him being able to hear about your day at school etc. and all that thinking brings other emotions with it. While you focus on seeing him again, some of the sadness from everything he’s missed seems to tag along for the ride. So, if you feel like crying, go ahead! It’s completely normal and might even make you feel better.

Well, better get busy this morning. I’ve got another post or two simmering that I’m going to try to get to later on this afternoon when I take a break from the cleaning. Hope you all have a good weekend!

Sorry (and other Ramblings)

I hadn’t realized I’d not updated my blog in almost two months. Sheesh I suck.

Sorry.

Lets see, what’s new? For the last month we seemed to have ran through every sickness the local school system has to offer. Son had the tummy flu – which was 24 hours of puking. Then he had the barking cough that lasted two weeks. Daughter then had her turn at strep…then this week she caught the cold from hell and was out of school a day. I’ve felt like crap, but I think it is just being exhausted from the two weeks I was up with son every night.

*sigh*

We made it through Halloween though. Son went as a football player and daughter dressed up as Hannah Montana.

That leaves us ONE MORE HOLIDAY to make it through before husband will finally be home. I’m certainly not looking forward to the three of us being alone on Thanksgiving, but the silver lining is knowing not long afterwards, our family should be together again. And, with retirement approved, I hope it is the last time we’ll ever be separated.

I’ll try to write more tomorrow…

One Year – Twelve Months….

or three hundred sixty five days. Any way you cut it, it still sucks.

I couldn’t figure out yesterday why I was so down in the dumps. It finally dawned on me. September 20th, 2006 husband left for Iraq for his second tour. I guess I’m glad, looking back, that I didn’t know at the time that it’d be fifteen months instead of “just” twelve. It would have just made the good-bye even worse…

So much has happened in the last year. And, here we are facing another three months. It’s better than another twelve, but it still sucks just the same.

And I reserve the right to continue to bitch and whine for 90 more days ha!