Awful House

August 2, 2006 was the day I sent my husband off to war. We had been married two and a half months.

We drove to his Army Reserve unit early that morning. The unit scheduled some kind of “Family Readiness” briefing for spouses/families that day, before we had to say goodbye. This 45-minute presentation would be my first and only introduction to the Army way of life throughout his entire deployment, or ever, but the briefing was scheduled at something like 9 or 10am, two hours after the soldiers were required to show up. So after I dropped off my soldier, I had to occupy myself alone in the thriving metropolis of Wilson, NC.

REDRUM

My first two years of college, I lived in a unique residential living-learning program, where I met numerous really cool people who became lifelong friends. One of the traditions at Residential College is that each semester, most of the dorm packs up and retreats for a weekend to a giant cabin in the mountains of North Carolina. Alumni and faculty are invited, too. (Well, alumni WERE invited, until my freshman class sort of ruined things for posterity with a weekend of debauchery exacerbated by alcohol provided by older alumni. But that’s a blog post for another day.) Alumni are now only invited in the spring semester, so one spring, some of my closest friends decided to have a mini reunion by attending the retreat.

Any of the Glens'll Do

In 2004, I was a never married 35-year-old single white female, once again facing a familiar predicament: how do I meet men? I didn't attend church. I had taken classes in swingdance, winetasting, and Klingon, and was running out of hobbies to investigate, and the last guy I'd dated that I met in a bar had a blue mohawk and turned out to be a cocaine dealer. (The bouncers in every bar in GloSo waved us on through the door, and I thought, "Wow, he sure knows a lot of people!")

I started asking some friends about their experiences with online dating.

Military Spouse Appreciation Day

Military Spouse Appreciation Day is the Friday before Mother's Day. It's not like there are a lot of commercial greeting cards for the occasion, so I made my own.

Buenos Cinco de Mayo

Or is it "Feliz"? Spanish is not one of the tongues in which I formally learned to speak. Anyway, these are my Cinco de Mayo earrings.

May the 4th Be with You!

Some people want to save the universe. I'd just like to have earrings for every occasion. Today is one of very few holidays (a kind of Star Wars Day) for which I do not have appropriate earrings. Well, okay, I have planets and space ships and stars but no real Star Wars earrings.

I do, however, have two Star Wars necklaces: the R2D2 shown in the photo and a Darth Vader. In the late 70s, when I was about 8 or 9 and very bored, I used to walk up to the Colony Shopping Center and buy myself a Pepsi or some candy and talk to the lady who worked the cash register in the drug store. I "had" to eat 10 Nestle Crunch bars and then send the wrappers, plus $3 of my allowance for shipping, for each pendant. I guess I couldn't eat fast enough to get C3PO.

R2's wheels don't spin, but at least his legs move. If he weren't so heavy, I'd be wearing him as an earring.

May the Fourth be with you!

St. Croix Souvenir

In late April of 2005, I had been dating Sean for almost a year, but he had spent nine months of that time training in Maryland to be a combat photographer with the Army Reserves. He had just finished his course and returned to Raleigh when the opportunity presented itself for us to travel to St. Croix with my brother Bob and my brother-not-in-law Cookie, who are both airline employees. Why not?

We spent a few days relaxing in the sun and driving around the island. On our last night, we decided to eat at the restaurant next door to our condo. After dinner, we walked back to the condo along the beach. Bob and Cookie had walked up ahead of Sean and me.

So we were just moseying along in the moonlight when Sean suddenly called my name while tugging on my hand.