Roo Fever...I'm getting the itch.

So even though Bonnaroo is 3.5 months away, I'm already starting to become irrationally excited about it, as happens every year in the weeks following the artist announcement. This year, the ticket was purchased before I even knew who was playing because A) I knew I would want to be there regardless,  and B) I had a really good feeling that Arcade Fire would be there this year. They have played Bonnaroo before, however, it was the one year since 2006 that I did not attend. The husband (then fiance) was returning from tech school the very week that the festival occurred. I should probably be ashamed, but I was not a happy camper that week. Yes, I was happy to see him. But, as a festie girl, I was really upset to be missing the Roo. I knew I'd be able to see the (soon-to-be) husband for the rest of the summer, but Bonnaroo only happens once a year! And to top it off, the group I go with every year randomly got free VIP camping, which will never happen again. I know, I know, I am a terrible person. 

I've wanted to see Arcade Fire for years though, so this year shall be epic. In addition, I totally covet Régine Chassagne's adorable gold sequined dress (and to be completely honest, I want her ribbon rings, as well). This article pretty much reads my mind...
"Régine Chassagne of Arcade Fire wore the gold sequined dress by which I shall henceforth judge all other gold sequined dresses. It was one part Broadway, one part disco, one part hometown tap recital. Wearing a gold sequined dress of this caliber has now officially been added to my list of Things to Do in My Thirties. Oh, plus there were sequined glovelettes. But you know it’s never really the dress; it’s the way you wear it. My mom taught me that, and this performance confirms it.
Régine sang Mountains Beyond Mountains with her eyes closed and then ribbon danced with wild abandon. That’s right, she brought out actual ribbon rings and danced around the stage like a little kid dancing around her living room without a hint of embarrassment or apology. I’ve undertaken these moves myself with the key differentiators being I’m swooshing socks around in the saftey of my apartment while she’s swooshing ribbons around on live television. Such confidence! Obviously I’ve got to up my game, and when in need of a role model, I’ll watch this video."

MilSpouse Friday Fill-in #31

1. Aside from no deployments, what is one thing you would want to make the MilSpouse life "perfect"? submitted by Oh How Delightful
Two things come to mind. The less logical/realistic one is removing all bases that are in the middle of nowhere. I never want to live farther than 20 minutes from a Target (I'll make an exception for overseas bases). Being stationed in BFE is probably my worst nightmare. On a more realistic note, given the awful and unhelpful doctor's appointment I went to this week, I'd love to have more choice and easier access to the doctor of one's choice in a military healthcare setting. It made me miss going to off base doctors when I had to explain several times to my friends that if they want to change doctors, they just have to make sure their insurance is accepted and pick up the phone, while I, on the other hand, have to fill out seven pages of paperwork to change my doctor and then wait several weeks for a new appointment.

2. Just how many peppers did Peter Piper pick? submitted by Married into Army
That would be a peck, or a quarter-bushel. According to this guy, who has way too much time on his hands, Peter would have picked 456 peppers if he picked peperoncini, which is my pepper of choice.

3. If you could have any career in the world with nothing holding you back, what would you do? submitted by It's My Party and I'll Cry if I Want To
This is probably pretty lame, but the only thing I've really wanted to be in recent memory is a librarian. I'm sure there are way more awesome/difference making choices, but I'm sticking with it.

4. Do you have a service oriented tattoo and if so what is it. If you don't what would you get? submitted by The Squid's Accomplice
I have a single tattoo. It's a good old fashioned "I'm-18-and-I-can-do-what-I-want" tribal tramp-stamp. The only other tattoo I've ever considered is a pirate ship on my back, as I've seen several amaze-balls versions of that idea. I'll qualify that as loosely service related since the Navy fights pirates.

5. Imagine a block of time has opened up in your busy day for you to take a class in anything you like. What subject would you choose? submitted by To The Nth
Ooooh, there are so many options. I want to learn German because it sounds kind of scary. And I sometimes do exceptionally nerdy things, like looking up what awesome history classes JMU is currently offering, despite knowing I can't take them. Plus, I'd like to start taking library science grad school courses. But I'm going to scrap the academics and go with a knitting class. My pregnant soulmate has tried to teach me before and we got as far as me making a chain(?) but my fingers are not very dexterous with those needles.

My new doctor can suck it

I’ve been having anxiety issues for a month or two now. The move is a little more than four months away so I think I’m just freaking out about that, but it has also been triggered by my menial-yet-sometimes-high-stress job and during the preparations for my grandma’s funeral. I get this tightness in my chest, feel like I can’t catch a deep enough breath, my entire body tenses up, and sometimes I have trouble going to sleep (like the night I was still awake when the husband got up for work at 5am). I had these issues once before, two years ago during my last semester of college. The same symptoms brought on by similar things - upcoming move, job and school stress, awful asshole drum playing neighbor. I had a fantastic doctor I saw pretty regularly and he prescribed Xanax, which worked really well for me. After I graduated and moved, the things triggering the anxiety went away, so I stopped taking it. So obviously, now that I need it again, I have no prescription.

Which brings us to today. I went to my appointment on base and described what I said above to the doctor’s assistant. Then the doctor came in. I was expecting my usual (cute male) doctor that I had seen during my last two (unrelated) appointments, but had a new doctor instead. She pretty much sat down, told me she didn’t like Xanax, had me make an appointment for a behavioral health consultation and wrote a prescription for Paxil. By the time I picked up the prescription, read the info on it and started describing the visit to the husband, I was in tears. I really do not like the sound of the potential side effects from Paxil (among them weight gain, sexual side effects, thoughts of suicide. Yeah, no thank you). I explicitly told them I had the same problem before and what I was previously prescribed had worked for me. I couldn't really give a fuck less that this doctor I'd never seen before today doesn't like it. Instead of making me feel better, as I hoped a trip to the doctor would do, this entire episode pretty much gave me an afternoon long anxiety attack. If you can't tell, I'm still quite wound up about it.

So I was not sure what to do, but a friendly phone call helped immensely. I've decided not to take this new RX. I have too many reservations and have already heard a terrible review of it from a friend. My current plan is to call the office tomorrow, speak to a nurse, and tell them (in much nicer language than I just used) how I feel. Hopefully there is another doctor I can see, who may value MY opinion of how to treat MY condition based on MY personal experience. This is my first time batting against the military healthcare bureaucracy, though I've heard many horror stories, so to say I'm intimidated (and thus anxious) is an understatement. In the meantime, I'm going to go try to breathe.

Punxsutawney Phil was right!

What an utterly delightful weekend! Unseasonable warmth! Outdoorsy-ness! Fun times with friends I see far too little of! More weekends need to be like this one.

The husband and I took advantage of the lovely weather and went to the park twice in three days for some geocaching. In short, it is some good nerdy treasure hunting fun. We've just started doing it, but it's an excuse to go play outside, which we don't do nearly enough of, and it gave the husband an excuse to buy a new gadget (a handheld GPS that was half off at the BX). If there are two things he loves (aside from me and the cat), it's gadgets and good deals. Anyhow, it was nice that we got to go out and frolic because he's working crazy evening/night/twelve hour shift hours for the next two weeks. And he's not even going to be working during the inspection the exercise is practicing for, but whatever. 

The highlight of the weekend, however, was my friend Randy's birthday party.

This is Randy.You can probably tell from the mustache just how awesome he is. He is part of the crew I have gone to Bonnaroo with four of the last five years, so integral to the crew that we have dubbed ourselves Randy's Renegades. I usually only see him once or twice a year, so this was a special occasion. Randy and other crew members finally got to meet the husband after hearing me talk about him for years, and vice versa. My bff was there and our friend James came down from New York. We got a very detailed narrated tour of Randy's insanely awesome weapon room that I've been hearing about for years and got to shoot a potato gun in his backyard. And his wife! She is the most adorable and saucy lady I could possibly imagine. Despite the three hour drive home at 1 am and the extra hour it took to get to the party due to four miles of interstate being closed, it was a majestically wonderful evening. And the icing on the cake? Even though it wasn't my birthday, I got a super sweet present.

I am now the proud owner of my very own magic wand. Randy carved it from black gum. It has threads of edenite throughout, is tipped with a Madagascar crystal, and has a piece of a 300,000 year old meteorite from Wolfe Creek, Australia in the handle. Best un-birthday gift EVER! I've already used it to have the husband make me a grilled cheese. It could have just been him being nice, but I prefer to think that it was magic.

(My First) MilSpouse Friday Fill-in #30

Whoa, do you have any idea how hard I worked trying to figure out how to get that image inserted and aligned?!?! This html business and my brain are not friends. (ed. note - I only later noticed the "insert image" button Blogger provides.)

1. What is your favorite MilSpouse blog?
I've just gotten into reading MilSpouse blogs. I've just recently caught up on L to the third (Virginia-based history nerds, unite!), Just Another Snarky Navy Wife, who has a delightfully filthy mouth, and the The Unlikely Wife Adventures!

2. What are your favorite perks about your s/o being deployed?
Freedom to pick up and take my much loved random road trips. The husband has only been deployed once, it was short and it was to a "safe" place. I didn't have to spend my time worrying, which was great. So I spent my summer making numerous trips to my hometown and my college town, having adventures in Kentucky, going to Bonnaroo, aka the happiest place on Earth, and throwing a joint birthday party with my bff. All in all, a pretty great summer, minus the whole missing the husband part. Oh, the joys of having no children and a menial job!

3. How long did you date your significant other before getting engaged? Married?
We started working together in August of 2004 (and I apparently stole his job). For several years I referred to him as "creepy." Luckily, I eventually realized that it wasn't really creepiness, just nerdy eccentricity.  I remember buying him shots after insisting he come out with me and some of our co-workers in May 2006, after learning that his 21st birthday was the previous week and he hadn't appropriately celebrated yet. By early 2007, he was inviting himself and a bottle of wine over  to my apartment after work nearly every night to watch movies or play Guitar Hero or help me study for Econ exams, and he would sometimes fall asleep on the couch. My then-roommate/bff said something to the effect of, "You know one day he's just going to come over and never leave, right?" Yeah, she was right. We don't have an official date, but we started dating in late-February-ish. He left for basic training in October and proposed on the eve of New Years Eve. We sneakily got married in August 2008, but we lived 3 hours apart until May 2009 when I graduated and was able to move. So we're basically newlyweds, right?

4. What do you think your significant other would do if he wasn't in the military?
Something computer-y and calibration-y.

5. If you could talk to the Secretary of the Air Force what is one suggestion you would like to bring to their attention in order to improve the lives of military families?
If you are going to offer education assistance money to MilSpouses, make it accessible to all of us. I had only just heard of MyCAA from another MilSpouse and was thinking, "Ooooh, potential free grad school monies!?," when the program disappeared and then reappeared in a re-vamped, totally not useful to me way. Just because I have a bachelor's degree doesn't mean I'm necessarily finished with school, and the fact that it is now only applicable to associates and certificates is kind of a joke.

VD

As in Valentines Day. Even though I am most happily married, being the cynical lady that I am, I'm just not a fan. Sure, I'll take a box of chocolate dipped strawberries if the husband feels the need to buy them. And that time five years ago when my teenaged bar regular (I promise, I only served him sweet tea) sent me a dozen roses at work was kind of adorable. But really guys, I hate that you're supposed to feel obligated to show love on one specific day of the year. Shouldn't that be happening all the time?

In a perfect world, I'd be able to just ignore all of this hullabaloo, but my current job situation makes it impossible. I think it must be the decade of working in the wonderful food service industry that has made me truly loathe the day. This VD, I will once again be trapped within the walls of America's favorite Australian themed restaurant, serving boatloads of people who go out once a year. I can only hope that someone decides the most romantic thing ever would be to propose over the restaurant-wide intercom (it has happened before). I'm honestly contemplating having a drink or two before I go in. 

I will admit that I am excited for "Chocolate Sale Tuesday" tomorrow. And I must thank NPR for this lovely article. Oh, to be an ancient Roman.

    My grandma died last week. It wasn't  unexpected, as she had been steadily fading (due to dementia) for nearly a decade, to the point that she didn't know who anyone was anymore. So while part of me is a bit sad, it was also kind of a relief. I don't like remembering the shell of a person she was in the recent past, so this is what I'll remember....

    My grandma was born in 1926, the youngest of twelve children. According to a story told by one of her older siblings, she was a 14 pound newborn, or rather, the scale only went up to 14 pounds, thus the reason she was the last child. After her father died when she was a teenager, she moved with her mother and sisters from the farm where she was born to the city where she lived in for the rest of her life.

   When I was growing up, she lived right down the street. When I was a baby, she came to our house to stay with me so I didn't have to go out in the cold. After I was older, I stayed with her while my parents were at work and, according to my mother, she let me get away with murder (I suppose I was a bit of a hellion as a child). 

    Her backyard was filled with flowers.  At one point, she had thirteen cats. She made amazing chicken casserole and sweet tea. She never learned to drive. When it was nice out, she spent the evenings on her porch swing. She always tried to make me eat breakfast, despite my having ridiculous morning sickness for most of my youth, and when she did convince me to eat breakfast, she would always make my requested bologna sandwich on toasted bread cut diagonally into four pieces instead of the bacon and eggs she would have rather I ate. She had an ancient set of encyclopedias that I read for fun and she told me lots of stories about growing up on the farm in the olden days, which helped make me the history nerd I am today. And once, after her mind was seemingly long gone, she looked at me with recognition and said, "I used to take care of you when you were a little girl," and smiled. It was nice to be remembered.

 Thanks for the memories, Grandma. I'll miss you.