The Story of Us - Our First Date

Who knew I would find my soumate at the tender age of seventeen, that my whole life would change because of one amazing person.

I met Conrad through his little sister and my friend Megan. I was changing schools and began to work at a department store to earn some extra cash to get me to and from school. Megan and I became friends and over time she began to talk about her big brother. He sounded amazing from the get go and I decided that I would slyly hunt him from afar. Subtly dropping hints to Megan about how my whole family is military and I loved a man in uniform. After a few weeks it finally paid off. Megan talked to Conrad about me and his response to her was to tell me to " give him a call in a couple years. " Well being who I was and having the attitude I still do, I told her to tell him to go screw himself lol. Apparently she had told him I was 16 and he thought that was too young. A little while later Megan and I went to a movie and came back to her house thoroughly terrified. When we walked in the house he was just sitting there and watching the Man Show. He didnt even look up to say hello and all I got out of him was a grunt. Even though he may not have shown it I must have made an impression because not too long afterward Megan called and and asked it I wanted to go to a movie with Conrad. My response was that if he wanted to take me out he could man up and ask me himself. I secretly thought it was all a joke and I was not going to be played. Highschool is a cruel place ya know? Well he got on the phone, sounding very confident and suave and asked me himself. He was on leave from his base in Cheyenne, Wy and had a couple weeks to kill. Our first date was casual and with his best friend and Megan coming along. I walked into their house the night were going out and walked downstairs looking around for him. It had been a while since I had seen him ( in the dark non the less ) and he had grunted at me so when I saw Megan standing next to someone, naturally I thought it was him. He was tall with a receeding hair line, goofy looking all around. My heart dropped and I was stunned thinking that this couldn't be the guy I saw before. I heard a loud thunk and turned around and Conrad appeared at the top of the stairs. My heart skipped a beat and I knew automatically it was him. He was wearing a Broncos jersey and jean shorts ( in February, something I still tease him about ). In that moment I knew he was something special and I felt comfortable. We headed off to the movie and made it twenty minutes too late to see the original movie we picked out. We were left with no choice but to see The Life of David Gale..........not a good first date movie if any of you haven't seen it. Throughout the whole movie Conrad and I were cracking jokes and talking and trying to ignore the awkwardness of the movie. We were shushed but we didn't care. We were in our own little world in that moment. The movie ended and Conrad and I held hands while we walked out to the car, and then he opened the car door for me. Lol it sounds silly but I completely melted. We went back to his house and I asked for a couple ibuprofen for the small headache that was about the ruin my night. I remember he handed them to me then tried to take them back to open them for me. i didn't want to be precieved as a weak little girl to I playfully grabbed them back. This began the first of many wrestling matches to come. The wrestling match turned into a game of " you cant catch me " which spilled out onto the snow covered street. Of course he caught me, but only because I let him. I stayed until midnight that night and finally went home knowing I was going to spend the rest of my life with him.

It's heeeeere!

Conrad deployed last Thursday to Kuwait. I haven't been able to write or talk much about it because I honestly just want to stay numb. My friend Beth knows what i'm talking about. Being numb is so much easier than letting the flood of emotions wash over me. I cant lose control because I have to hold it together alone now. Conrad has done an amazing job of trying to make this easier for me. Sending flowers, emails, calling whenever he gets a chance. He even sent me an edible arrangement to work for Valentine's Day. The girls at work all ohhh and ahhhed and proceeded to talk about how our marriage was like a Nicholas Sparks novel ( ; . We have an amazingly strong marriage and so far this deployement (although only a week in ) has strengthened it, but the fact remains that the better half of me is thousands of miles away. This isn't a romance novel, or a fairy tale like some people I know compare it to. I'll never kow how people can romanticize a situation like this. It is in no way, shape or form romantic. It is lonely and scary and miserable, but I'm getting through it. I've dealt with it better than I ever thought I could. I'm staying busy and and going out and for the first time this weekend I am going to see a movie all by myself. It feels almost a little empowering, I was never really single or alone. I got married 3 days out of highschool and moved right in with my husband. Now for the first time in my life five and a half years later I almost have to learn how to be single ( of course without the whole dating thing thank god! ). Wish me luck!                                                                      

( and no I will NOT be seeing Dear John anytime soon lol )

The Military Comes First

...............and that sucks sometimes. I'm in the middle of a very small mini breakdown while talking to my husband who is trying to calm me down, when all of a sudden ( what a cliched phrase ) " There's a situation I have to go......" It never fails. No matter what is going on it's always something and my life gets put on the back burner. Work isn't fantastic right now, apparently I'm too stressed lol. Well gee I wonder how that happened. I have an anxiety disorder, maybe that plays a factor too! I just for one day would love to live the life of a normal person who doesnt bring their work home with them, has it brought to them, or is forced to stay at work for days and days on end. 9-5...............what a dream, maybe someday




listening to: The crickets chirpin in my empty head

Trials and Tribulations

It feels as though this year will never end. I say that like it would make any difference.........Life has no concept of time, it doesn't give one great year and then on horrible year. It just seems like if I can get past this year things might turn around,just another milestone, but it's only August and things just seem to be getting worse. We had to put my dog to sleep on 8/8/09. She was our wedding present to each other and since we don't have kinds yet she was just like one of our kids. I was completely devastated but had know for some time it was coming. Women's intuition or something along those lines, or maybe we were just so connected there couldn't have been a way I didn't know. As with everything else I just curled into my ball once again and just kept telling myself it was going to be fine. Thank God my husband was home and we were all together. If he had been gone I don't know what i would have done. She was one of those rare wonderful dogs who was there for me every time Conrad was gone and that's technically been half of our marriage. A few days after that happened, we found out that my last living grandparent is very sick and might not make it through till the end of the year. Wow. Losing all 3 grandparents in one year........just wow. I'm terrified of what's around the corner and I feel as though I am paralyzed in fear of what's going to happen next.
Life has never been easy for me, from an early age I dealt with loss, addictions, betrayal, your basic soap opera fodder. I am not naive, I've been through the ringer a couple of times and have always come out better for it. I know I will be ok but like I said there's so much else that could go wrong.
My mother has leukemia and has since I was 17. I remember the day we found out. I was sitting at home with her playing on the computer and she limped into the room. Something was wrong. The left side of her face was quickly beginning to droop. I sat there stunned knowing exactly what was happening but completely terrified and unable to even speak. After a few seconds I shook myself out of it and ran over to her and made her sit down. The drooping was worse and I got down on my knees and kept asking her questions. Each answer uttered was more slurred than the next. All the while she was trying to smoke a cigarette......grrrrr. The only thing I could think of was OH MY GOD my mother is having a stroke and shes going to burn down the house with this stupid deathstick. Maybe 2 minutes passed and we had my dad on the phone to let him know I was going to call 911. He told me not to call them! I still don't understand that to this day. Maybe he thought I didn't know what was going on or maybe he thought I was making it up. ( He is the one I learned denial from ). I yelled at him to get home and hung up then called 911. To this day the sounds and sight of firetrucks and ambulances makes me well up with tears ( it's horribly embarrassing when this happens ). Watching them load my mother onto a stretcher and into the ambulance is a memory I can't get rid of. When in the hospital she had 10 or so more strokes and they did every blood work up possible on her. I just remember how defeated my dad looked. That's when I knew something was wrong. You see my dad is our rock always the strongest and most level headed. They finally told me her diagnosis and even at 17 I knew it was a death sentence. What I didn't know then was that they gave her a year to live.......1 year. Well I am 23, 24 next month, and damnit she's stuck it out this long and beaten all the odds, but it's getting worse. She is only 46, on oxygen and won't leave the house because she doesn't want people to see her with her oxygen. Did I mention that she has emphysema because of the cigarettes? Ugh I live in fear that I will lose my mom. We haven't had the best relationship at times ( which I won't get into now ) but I still call her everyday and visit her at least once a month. So you see my husband is leaving for 6-8 months and my mom is really sick and I just feel so completely and absolutely alone. I want something good to happen, I want my mom to go into remission, I want my husband to stay home with me. I know it's a lot to ask God but please?

There is always someone who has it so much worse than you and I know that but sometimes it impossible to put on that happy face everyone wants to see and the military expects of the wives..........


Listening to: Pink - Funhouse

This year has been one of the hardest I have ever had to go through. I lost both my grandparents in the same month, I've lost people who I thought would truly always be there for me no matter what, and now my husband is deploying. Wow. They say God only gives you what you can handle, and I know I can handle this, but why do I have to be alone in doing it? I have 1 friend who has always been there for me and I thank God for her every single day, but she has a baby and a deployed husband too. Not to mention she lives far away so I can't just put all of my baggage on her. That's not what a good friend does. Looking back at this year I wonder sometimes how I got through it. Maybe denial was my coping mechanism. Thank God for Denial. When things start to go sour for me I curl up into a little ball like a porcupine and send my spikes out. As long as I do that, nothing else can hurt me. I always thought of myself as a very strong person. Slowly but surely I am finding this to be completely untrue. I'm falling apart and I have no one to put me back together. I can't put any of this on my husband or my best friend, they just have too much to deal with without my stupid issues. I'm trying to keep it together and hopefully it looks intact from the outside, at least I guess that's all I can hope for right now. I am very thankful for my life and I love being a military wife but that doesn't mean it isn't difficult.

Listening to: Jack Johnson, Better Together