At the end of my last post, my husband and I were hours away from leaving for our long awaited honeymoon. As excited as I was, I also felt a little nervous. We have been together almost 12 years, so it wasn’t like a first date kind of nervous, but more like a "I cannot remember the last time I spent this much time alone with my husband” kind of nervous.

I guess I worried that I might be a little boring.

With so much time apart between work ups,  deployments, trainings and schools, I cannot remember the last time we spent a week together that didn’t involve a PCS or having a baby.  So without those distractions, what will we do? What will we talk about without two toddlers screaming and throwing food at each other?

A beach vacation is a dream for me.  I am perfectly content sitting on the beach in silence with no plans for my day but my husband, on the other hand, is not a sit down on the beach kind of guy.  Especially after a couple of deployments to the desert. Can we make it work? And with no kids and work to go to, we have no restrictions. What will we do?

Our big weekend plans usually consists of making popcorn with our 3-year-old and watching a Disney movie while we play catch up from the week and talk about work and the funny things the kids did lately. Sometimes we sneak in a glass of wine. Or if we are really daring, we add in a little fancy cheese plate. I can’t believe I am finally going to be kid free and I am nervous  to hang out with my husband. I hope he still likes me!

So our dream vacation came and went. It actually started with both my husband and I getting food poisoning hours before our flight left so I thought for sure our vacation was doomed to be terrible. Somehow it was a quick illness and we both recovered by the time we left the country.

Despite the way it started and all my worries, it was much easier to relax then I thought it would be. I knew the boys were in great hands and could reach us if they needed to. The best part was, I realized my husband and I still have the strong foundation that has kept us going all this time.

Our friendship and marriage were much stronger than I thought. We were finally able to put aside our other roles in life at work and as parents and focus on what we had before the military and our kids, each other. We survived deployments, being apart during the births of our sons and move after move after move as well as so many days and months apart. How did I ever worry we would have nothing to talk about?

We had so much to talk about! We laughed and reminisced about the past and made plans for our future. Some mornings we just sat at the pool and held hands while we both read our own books.  At one time, I may have been worried about that silence between us but something about it was comforting. 

We went sightseeing and jammed packed the other day with tours that kept us busy. We dressed up, had romantic candlelight dinners. It was amazing. But despite how amazing this dream vacation was, I realized how much I love our life - our family and the everyday chaos.

Don’t get me wrong. I would go back on vacation in a heartbeat. But now that I know we still can be that fun, married couple, I like being the old, married couple. I think I am finally done with trying to count our moves and add up all our time apart. It doesn’t matter how many days we are apart in this military life, all that matters is what we have when we are together.

If the play on the field at this year's Super Bowl left you feeling blah, some of the commercials may just have warmed your heart and even, drew a tear or two.

Social media was abuzz in the weeks after the game with talk of the military-themed commercials and specifically Budweiser's 1-minute spot welcoming home Lt. Chuck Nadd of Winter Park, Fla. Even for those of us who have endured dozens of welcome home moments, that wave of emotion during a joyous homecoming never gets old. The tears flowed freely across the nation in that one, hot minute.

Occasionally, similar videos pop up on Facebook and You Tube. Each is an instant shock of love to the heart. Each leaves a majority of us blathering on with tears of happiness.

Do you love watching them? Here's a way to see them all in one spot. 

Visit http://welcomehomeblog.com/  

The site bills itself as the #1 site for videos of surprise military homecomings. It is a part of a larger conglomerate of blogs called Feel Good Blogs where visitors can view military homecomings, surprise wedding proposals, videos of moms-to-be revealing the good baby news to family and friends as well as videos of cute animals. Basically, this site is all things warm and fuzzy.

The Welcome Home section also features videos of four-legged family members welcoming home their service members.

And if you have a video of your service member arriving home, they want it! You can submit your homecoming moment to the site to share as well.

But before you sit down to watch any of the videos, grab a box of Kleenex. You are going to need it.

I am a native Floridian. 

I know how to wear SPF 100+ sunscreen and weather a hurricane with nothing more than a mattress and some ice blocks.

Lord help me if we ever get stationed above the Mason-Dixon Line, though.

Groton, Conn. is one such option in our fairly near future. I quake at the thought of it. Not because I actually loathe the idea of living in New England. I’m not even afraid of the cold.

But because I don’t have the faintest idea how to drive in snow.  

A few years back, when we were stationed in Charleston, S.C., and the city endured a crisis-level ice storm, I really thought I might be done for. 

I had no idea how to break my car free of its ice sheath. I had no idea how to drive it once it was free. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to go to work or not.

I was confused. Why was the governor declaring a state of emergency if we still had power and heat?  Then, there was my dog – my giant, Floridian dog, who gave himself a UTI because he refused to pee on the ice rink that we had formally called our backyard simply because the sound of the ice cracking as he stepped on it freaked him out.

Now, down here in sunny, almost-always-warm Georgia, I laugh when the commands do their mandatory hurricane-preparedness seminars in May.  And then I quickly encourage all my fellow military spouses to attend, as most are from the landlocked lands of Ohio, Illinois, Idaho, or Nebraska. They didn’t grow up surviving Hurricane Andrew like I did.

So it came as no shock to me that, last week, the threat of snow and black-ice on the roads sent southeast Georgia into a tizzy. We watched Atlanta shut down as the snow fell and, before we knew it, the stores were packed. No one could find milk or bread, even at a gas station.  Schools were cancelled and the local government officials stayed home too.

Meanwhile, all those military families with northern origins laughed. They giggled at the thought of Georgians panicking at the idea of driving in weather that was below freezing.

But that’s because they’ve never seen Southerners drive on ice. White-knuckling it doesn’t even begin to describe the paralyzing fear you experience watching senior citizens, soccer moms and high-school seniors drive on slick, frozen roads. 

Add to the mix the military spouses that populate this military town? Well, a hurricane doesn’t look so treacherous after all.

I have always loved the mix of Americana we experience living in military towns.  After all, I get to eat Buckeyes, cheesesteaks and deep-dish, Chicago-style pizza all the way down here in Georgia.

But when the weather gets wacky, the chaos, the fear and confusion all seems amplified in the mix.
It really does become the perfect storm.

I’m a word girl. Always have been. I love books and writing. I’ve always been a fan of the creative arts.  Ever since I took the leap and went back to school to pursue a degree, I’ve aimed my goals toward that point on the academic compass. 

When we PCS’d to a new duty station, I had to transfer schools. I’m not going to lie, it wasn’t the smoothest transition. 

When I began, I elected to take many sophomore level classes as a freshman, such as children’s literature and creative writing. When I transferred, these courses (and many others) were turned into elective credits at my new school. 

Let me say that again, so it really sets in: the beloved books such as Charlotte’s Web and Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, as well as the personal works of fiction that I had spent a year immersing myself in were labeled as some sort of jaunty romp through nothingness, rather than as legitimate credit toward my English degree. My passion, drive and incredibly hard work had amounted to Underwater Basket Weaving 101 in the eyes of my new college. 

I wanted to weep. 

As a result, I ended up receiving an associate's degree in general studies. I know, how classy and educated does that make me sound? Now, as I’m harvesting my educational chi to, once again, dive into the crashing waves of full course loads and $300 worth of rented textbooks, I find myself questioning my choice of curriculum. 

Do I attempt to return to English and creative writing? On one hand, those are things that I love and cherish, and have the most fun with. Or do I embrace the suck (as it were) and avoid the serious possibility that I will have pigeonholed myself, once again, into scholastic heartache? 

Decisions, decisions.

It's Valentine's Day and this day-long love fest may not exactly be your thing.

I love my husband and sure, I like to be appreciated and fawned over, who doesn't? But we've never really made a big deal out of Feb. 14th's comings and goings. We prefer to celebrate days that are more intimately entwined with our lives.

And when I was single, well, St. Valentine came and went without nary a notice.

But whether you skip the holiday, despise it or demand the star treatment from your significant other, one thing is clear about love - it does a body good. Hold up, get your minds up and out of the gutter. There is that, but doctors say being in love is good for our health too.

A report released last year showed that people who were with their spouse or partner, even if the relationship was not a positive one, had a drop in blood pressure. On average the study participants' blood pressure went down one point. Not a huge drop, but significant to note, said lead author of the student Brooks Gump, assistant professor of psychology of the State University of new York at Oswego. 

A 2007 study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found the same results and a 2010 study found that people with quality relationships with friends who were not necessarily a spouse or partner, also experienced lower blood pressure when they were with those individuals.

The small decrease in blood pressure may seem insignificant but for the lonely, the study results are staggering.  Study participants who were less social saw a 14.4 point rise in their systolic blood pressure as reported in the Journal of Psychology and Aging.

So, it is not hard to understand why similar studies have also shown that being in a relationship decreases the likelihood of being depressed. A study found that married subjects scored an average of 3.42 points lower on the 84-point depression scale than unmarried participants, according of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior.

And in an interview with ABC News, scientists from the National Institute of Medicine said studies around the globe have repeatedly yielded the same results: people in isolation, or who are disconnected from others, have an increased risk of dying prematurely.

Love, it seems, is good for you.

So, step away from your computer. Go find your partner, good friend or your children and spend the afternoon connecting and appreciating each other. It will make you feel good today, and possibly, for years to come.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Freaking Deployment Gnome. 

Ugh. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve uttered this phrase during this deployment. What’s the Deployment Gnome? Oh, that pesky little creature who shows up the minute your soldier deploys and begins to wreak havoc on every aspect of your life. 

He’s showed up in force this time. You name it, it seems to have happened. Amid the insanity, I’ve decimated a car battery, burst a pipe, killed mice, watched my trees give way in an ice storm, nursed the kiddos through too many rounds of the stomach flu and we’re now under a warning for 80 inches of snow. Yes, go ahead and read that again, I mean every inch of it. 

The Deployment Gnome is real, my friends, and he lies in wait to strike when we’re most vulnerable.  Truth is, it’s not about what he does to us, it’s about how we handle it. I hate to say this, but… um…  stuff happens, it’s just life. 

Pipes are going to burst. Babies are going to puke. The ten year-old will set the microwave on fire making popcorn. The world continues to turn without our guys/gals here to help. But when these huge things happen, they feel even more monstrous because we are dealing with them alone.

A simple task that I would normally ask my husband to help me with becomes monumental when I’m (1) not used to dealing with that particular problem (hence, why my car was  late for an oil change – don’t judge me, peeps) and (2) am trying to parent our five, crazy hooligans while all this is happening. 

I’ve learned it takes exactly 42 minutes to snow blow our driveway/sidewalk if I stay on top of it. I can totally swing that during our Little Miss’ nap time, if the boys agree not to kill each other while I’m pushing the snowblower. Then again, that may be too much to ask.

The good news is, I’ve learned that I am so much more capable when he’s gone, because I know I have to step up my game. I can’t smile at him and ask for help. I have to get it done, gnome or no gnome. 

Deployment gnomes do more than break your stuff, get your kids sick or throw you a curve ball. They test your strength. Sometimes they leave you in a huddled mess, but it’s not about that moment.

Oh no, if you need to sit down and wallow in your self-pity and cry it out, you do it. But then you get up and do something about it. A big part of surviving a deployment is taking a look at who you are and what you’re really capable of doing.

Part of deployment is looking at the siding that just peeled off your house and, instead of sobbing all day, getting it fixed before the storm grows worse. Part of deployment is surviving the stomach flu while lying under your toddler’s high chair, waiting for them to finish their lunch, because you know if you move one more inch, you’ll throw up ... again.

I’ve never been so angry as when I fractured my ankle in three places during Jason’s second deployment.  Well, that was until I battled a wall of snow and ice up to my chest to dig out my driveway last month, or maybe when ... oh, you get the point. 

It’s never going to be perfect, and maybe that’s the point. These guys are deployed, waging battles and while our battles on the home front might not be the same, or even close, they’re just as meaningful when we handle them right.

Heck, they're meaningful even when we handle them wrong. I vowed to never let the battery in Jason’s 4X4 go dead again. Yeah, I did it again - this time with the riding snow-blower buried behind it with 6 feet of snow headed our way. Right. Deep breath, because whining about it isn’t going to help.  Getting out the shovel? That’s a much more efficient use of my time. 

Speaking of which, it’s after 10 p.m., and if I get out there now, I have a prayer of keeping up with the little blizzard we’re having. 

Ladies, the gnome is going to strike. He’s going to break you apart, make you cry, make you howl at the unfairness of life during a deployment. But it’s not about what he does, it’s about how you handle it. 

So scream it out, and then take just the smallest millisecond and realize that while you think this deployment is breaking you, it’s really making you stronger. 

And always remember, this gnome is a temporary squatter, who is going to get kicked to the curb the moment those combat boots hit your entryway. Sometimes, even earlier. Mine is getting kicked to the curb before you read this. That’s right, I’m digging out because I have somewhere important to go, and someone exquisite to fetch, all before the milk expires. 

Kick your gnomes, ladies. You got this.

You know what is awesome about military retirement? We are nowhere near old enough to fit the profile of the typical retiree.

Young privates who check my military ID at the gate do a double take to look at the box marked : RET. I secretly say a silent 'thank you' to the universe for insuring that I do not yet look like a retiree caricature.

We have toddlers still not old enough for preschool. Other moms on the playground are jealous that as retirees, our schedules are no longer dictated by PCS, deployment or field exercises.

When many of our active duty neighbors head to work at o'dark thirty, we can roll over and wait for the much later alarm to ring in time for our kids to head to school.

And when snow and ice pelted our area, those in uniform still slogged their way onto base. We were allowed to huddle in our house with the rest of the community and wait for it all to melt.

Retiring young has perks.

Our kids are still kids. We have time to play with them. We still want to travel and explore and now we have time to do it. His career has been neatly tied up with a giant red ribbon which means after years of following him around and just sliding by, my career can take the lead. I get to decide where we move and what job I want, rather than take a job that is simply there. Meanwhile I will let him figure out school lunches.

But retiring young is also a problem.

We still have toddlers who need 18 years of schooling, new clothes, piano lesson and college.

We still have to work and earn substantial money, not just keep ourselves busy like many, much older retirees do. We have to work hard, probably for another 20 - 25 years to provide for our still very young family.

Our house is not our retirement home but merely our starter home which we are in the process of selling since it is officially too small. Our move to our new house is exhausting since that bill is paid by us now, not Uncle Sam.  

I can't imagine that any job is as demanding as the military but our friends' jokes about enjoying the quiet, golfing retirement are getting old. We're retired from one job, not from working.

Retirement is nice. It is nice to be free from the red tape and the heart ache and difficulties that come with military life. But I am looking forward to actual retirement. When in 20 years, after we've done the best we can and our new careers come to a graceful close, we can actually stop working.

When we don't even have to set the alarm.

When we never have to move into a new house again.

When we can call our friends and ask if they want to go golfing, on a weekday afternoon.

Military retirement is nice, but real retirement, that is a day I am really looking forward to.

Every Navy wife I know has it printed somewhere in her house.

On a refrigerator magnet. On a picture frame. On a Pinterest board.

Me? It’s saved as my laptop background. It’s a photo of a diving submarine with the words, “Sometimes I blow kisses to the bottom of the ocean.”

It’s trite, I know. But every submariner’s wife loves it, especially for moments like this past New Year’s Eve.

I was visiting family, so I was tucked into bed in giant sweatpants by 10:30 p.m.. My 2-year-old was snoozing beside me, a PBS special was playing on my iPad. I heard a rush of fireworks outside the window and thought, “Must be midnight.”  And then, without more than a second’s hesitation, whispered, “Happy New Year, babe.”

It wasn’t as hard or as sad as Christmas. Or my birthday or even Thanksgiving. Probably because I’ve outgrown New Year’s Eve debauchery, as I’m sure my sweats suggest.

And while it’s still sad to not have my sailor to kiss at midnight - to know he’s somewhere, underwater standing a watch like it’s any other day – it’s also okay because, for us, 2014 is exciting. 

2014 is going to be a good year, at least as far as this Navy family is concerned.  Less deployment time. More holidays and important dates at home. A good chance he’ll be here for some birthday parties and vacations.

For us, as the New Year came around the bend, it brought with it the homestretch. It means that the mess and separation and crazy workload that 2013 brought in, is almost over.

I can miss another handful of days off, federal holidays and even a New Year’s kiss, if it means 2014 will lighten the load a little bit.

Finally, the real holiday I have been waiting for is on the horizon.

Since the day after Christmas, my toddler has been asking, “Is Daddy coming yet?  Is he getting off that boat yet?” While it’s not close enough on the calendar for her to understand – the poor thing  is still confused by the words “submarines” and “tangerines” and frequently asks me to peel her the vessel her father is aboard for an afternoon snack – it is close enough for me to start to daydream.

It is close enough to plan the kitchen DIY-project I’m envisioning we do together. To plan our baby’s first birthday, knowing I won’t have to grill the hamburgers and bake the smash cake. To realize we might stand a shot of enjoying a family beach trip. Maybe, we can even go camping.

My kids may not be there yet. They are still used to Daddy being gone and Mommy juggling all the balls, letting some drop all too frequently . But, I am long gone. I have moved on to 2014 and I have permission to dream again.

So while my kisses may still be aimed toward the ocean, somewhere out there, the end is in sight. I can’t wait to see what this new beginning brings.

Congress knew there would be a fight. They had to. When they sliced 1 percentage point off of military pension's annual cost-of-living increases, they must have known that the discussion would hardly end with the passing of the budget.

But did military members expect part of the public outcry to declare those in uniform as greedy and selfish?

In a January, 2014 editorial piece, The Washington Post calls the cut "an exceedingly modest one on a pension plan that is already far more generous than private-sector equivalents."

True. U.S. military retirement benefits are among the best in the nation, if not the planet. According to the Post's math, an E-7 with 20 years of active service would receive retirement pay of $1.734 million over the course of their life. After the budget cuts, that amount drops to $1.626 million. The paper does not define how many years that amount is calculated for.

The paper also points to the medical benefits retirees and their families can receive as well as the fact that many retirees continue to work another 20 years in the civilian sector. A soldier who enlists at 18-years-old can retire from the military at the ripe old age of 38.

Military interest groups have called the move a break in faith. Many of my friends see it is a lie. They were told upon enlisting that they would receive a benefit that now, after serving 20 years and in some cases, suffering debilitating wounds on the battlefield, those benefits are being pulled.

But the public, they seem to just see us as being greedy. The Post editorial calls the retirement cut a "small shift in resources toward training and equipping those who might have to defend us in the future."

The Post staff also points out that the service members who bear the brunt of the battlefield injuries, never reach retirement status and therefore never receive the benefit.

This week, military interest groups are rattling their sabers again after the Pentagon announced a possible reduction in the monies it gives to on-base commissaries, meaning many of those facilities may close. Veterans and service members again claimed foul. You are cutting our benefits, they say. You are breaking promises, they say. 

The public, however, seems to want us to toughen up and get over it.

An article in Time magazine this week agrees that the defense budget has shrunk overall in comparison to the total amount the nation spends on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

But, Time is also quick to point to the Pentagon's recent Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation which shows an increase in compensation of 60 percent per service member since the attacks of 9-11. Time quotes the report, "Military compensation has outpaced civilian wages and salary growth since 2002."

So are we being greedy or are we actually due all these benefits?

I think it's a little bit of both.

Does the retirement cut feel like a slap in the face? Absolutely. But 1 percent is a miniscule amount, especially when most retirees can and do continue on with a second career. My concern is for retirees who are 100 percent injured and unable to work again. That smaller crowd should be exempt from any future pay cuts. The rest of us can learn to budget around the loss and maybe admit that we are being a tad selfish.

The commissary cuts. Dear Pentagon, slow your roll. This is a huge slap in the face, not just to retirees but to all service members. The bulk of the people using these facilities are not retirees receiving a pension and a second paycheck. They are young service members and their families. I can personally tell you that the commissary is what is helping them stretch their money from paycheck to paycheck.

As retirees, we live nowhere near a commissary and our grocery bill has tripled now that we shop in a civilian grocery store. The commissary benefit is a stable of the military's benefit package and military families will suffer without it.

So, fellow military members and spouses, are we willing to give a little? Are we willing to take a step back and see the larger picture? Our country is in trouble. We have always been the first to step up and protect it. A cut in COLA for retirees could mean more money for weapons and training. It could save the on-base commissaries and make life easier for those who come after us.

Take a long, hard look. Are we being selfish? I have to say, in this instance, I think we are.

Read the full Washington Post editorial

Read the full Time article

Something happened this deployment that I never thought would: I got a book deal. Suddenly, my little “write to fall asleep” hobby materialized into the job I’d always dreamed about. But what blessed us simultaneously? The baby we’d been waiting for two years to appear was dropped off at hockey practice and we became instant foster parents.

All of a sudden I’ve got everything we’ve been praying for …  and my husband is deployed.

Overwhelmed isn’t quite the word for it.  No, out of my mind, or perhaps sleep-deprived?  Those might come closer. Now we have these five beautiful kids, a time-consuming hockey season and I’m trying to work from home.  Work! 

Now, I do have about an hour in the morning, where kid 5 is napping and kids 1- 4 are at school. And, it’s delicious. What do I choose to do with that?  Well, sometimes I work, and other times, well, I get all scandalous and shower. You know, without anyone busting in to tattle. But as soon as kid 4 hops off the bus? Well, I’m thinking I can manage to get some work done right?  Yeah.

So I sit at my newly-assembled office area, like I’ve become some kind of professional, and begin to work.  But then … it begins.

 “Momma! Can I wake the baby up? I want to see her.”

“Mommy!  Can I have a snack?”

So while I’m up getting kid 4 a snack, I figure I may as well throw those breakfast dishes in, and then why not toss that load of laundry in the dryer? Then it’s opening that can of play-dough, folding the laundry fresh out of the dryer, getting a phone call from the school that kid 3 has a fever, which leads to waking kid 5 up from her nap to retrieve kid 3. Now all three are hungry, so there’s lunch to be made, and cleaned up, and kid 5 fed, and put down to nap, but not until we vacuum out the aforementioned play-dough from the dining room carpet. Oh, and it’s time to snow blow the new six inches of snow here at Fort Drum.

Yeah, this looks a lot more like being a stay-at-home mom, and less work-from-home author.  Add on this deployment and the boys’ schedules, and is it any wonder it’s almost midnight as I’m writing this? 

I miss Jason, not just as my husband, my best friend, but also my partner. I miss having him to fall back on, to grab dinner if I’m lost in my edits, or to take the littles to practice so I can get the bigs to their hockey game. I miss his laughter, the way he hangs his uniform on the dining room chair, the way he kisses me when he gets home and launches into a wrestling brawl with the boys two minutes later.  I miss being on a team, instead of this plate-spinning routine I’m failing at right now. 

I envy the women who know how to work this system. You know them, the ones who have it all together and can run their business, finish school, generally be amazing while their husbands are deployed. I know a couple of these women, and I watch in awe at the grace with which they handle  themselves. As much as I’d love to be – I am not one of these women.  No, I’m more the “oh crud, you’re out of clean socks again?  Borrow your brother’s and I’ll throw your laundry in next” kind of mom during deployment.

Yet, it’s all getting done, I suppose. Sure, I’m not on my “A” game, like I am when Jason’s here. But how can I be when half of my team is missing? This deployment is winding down, thank goodness, and for every ounce of crazy that we’re going through, well, I know it will all smooth out when he walks through those doors again.

So, right now, I’ll vacuum up the play dough, snuggle the kids, and write at night.  Everything changes, everything adapts during a deployment and that includes me. I can’t really expect these huge changes to go as smoothly as they would if he’d been here, and honestly, I wouldn’t want them to. Because as crazy, hectic, and downright insane as it is to get my heart’s desire all at once in the middle of a deployment, I’m cool with it being nuts because I love that I still need Jason, even this close to the end.

Hurry home, babe, I can’t wait to see what you think of the changes around here!