Mukkefuck Cafe

Independence Day

I know it's a day early...but for us, today is Independence Day. That Guy I Married is officially retired from the US Army.

It seems like the Army has almost always been a part of my life. My Dad served in the Army when I was a kid and even when he got out he still worked for the government. Still does. In fact, he will be retiring from the DoD this fall or winter and moving to the mountains. Lots of big changes in the works for my whole family.

There are a lot of things about being a military family that are extremely difficult. The prospect of deploying and fighting in a war that you don't believe in. Having to part ways with people who you have grown to love every few years and starting all over again. Field problems. Long work hours. CQ. Staff Duty. On call. Mandatory "fun". The list goes on and on and on...and for those of you whose lives aren't directly impacted by these things, you won't have a clue as to what I am talking about.

There are also a lot of things that I love about being a military family. Meeting new people and seeing new places and having my kids endure the same. I think that our lives would be a lot less rich if we had just stayed in TGIM's hometown, or mine. Sure, we miss our families...but I think that we would not appreciate them as much if we had to see them every day. Also, for as much as I feel like I could happily live outside of the United States forever and ever, I am still a bit patriotic. I am glad to be an American...I am just not proud of every thing that being American stands for. Clear as mud???

I have certainly done my fair share of complaining over the years. Holiday and birthday celebrations have been ruined due to various duties and details. TGIM almost missed the birth of our last child and then deployed (albeit, only for a month) when he was just 7 days old. I can't even begin to guess how many times he has had to work late, leaving me to deal with dinner, bath and bedtime on my own. It seemed like I had almost daily gripes...but for the most part, they were all petty and trite.

Despite the hardships, I have really loved being an Army wife. I have enjoyed having the opportunity to serve those who so selflessly serve me. I have spent countless hours serving in Family Readiness Groups, doing whatever I could to help make things just a little bit better for our soldiers and for their families. It has been so fulfilling to me...and I am really going to miss that camaraderie.

We have been blessed to land a really good civilian job, here. TGIM will still be working at Landstuhl, in the same shop he has worked in for the past 3 1/2 years. I am sure that will help to smooth our transition. I guess I am just anxious to see how much the personal dynamics of our relationships here are going to change. Maybe not a lot. Maybe not even at all...but I suspect that getting promoted from an E4 to a GS10 is going to change a lot of things. Hopefully all for the best.

truth or dare

Despite the fact that I can't even come up with words to describe the SUCK that is you, my faithful reader...here's the truth about justdawn.

Originally posted November 17, 2005.

1) She was once known as 'spaghetti legs' Well, actually, I was most often referred to as "spider legs" and spaghetti arms...I was a bit gangly as a kid;)

2) She was once threatened with arrest for offering to mail dog poo to a member of the Los Angeles Police Dept. Well...yeah. It was during the LA Dead shows back in the Fall of '94, if memory serves me correctly. My dog squatted to take a poo right in the middle of the parking lot. I was trying to drag her off to the side so as to prevent a bigger mess from ensuing...and these fucking pigs started yelling at me to pick it up...etc...etc. I had every intention of picking it up and disposing of it properly, I truly did...but I could no do anything until she was FINISHED! I offered to pick it up and mail it to them...it was at that point the Denotsko dragged me away and asked me to kindly shut the fuck up;)

3) Friends were ordered to tell the story of her prom date's 'accident' to a judge under oath. ROFL...as interesting as that sounds...it is not true. I went to prom with one of my best friends, Luke. We actually only spent about 30 minutes at the prom before going back to the hotel room we had reserved with all of our friends to party:)

4) She eats three different kinds of fruit daily. False. I much prefer veggies to fruits...it is a texture thing. *gag*

5) She once owned a car with the words PARTY TIME written on the side. I am embarassed to admit that this in in fact, true. There was a little *incident* on my 16th birthday that left be believing that I would never actually be allowed to get my license, much less, own a car...so when my Dad showed up at my work one afternoon to pick me up in my very own 1984 Ford Escort with the hideous "Party Time" logo and accompanying graphics...I knew better than to complain. (nor did I complain when he drew up a sales contract that involved me paying him $500 more for the car than he did...)

6) Her father has been known to enjoy the sight of small dogs humping people's heads. heh...I love my Dad and his passive aggressive, sadistic tendencies:) Denotsko is the only person I have ever known to be molested by my Dad's dog...but who knows?!? There could be more;)

7) She has five tattoos. True...I have a phoenix on my right upper arm, a celtic band around my left arm, an HR Geiger inspired Allien on my right shoulder blade, a Celtic knotwork Jackal design on my left, and a skeletal lizard on my right calf.

8) She can spit ping-pong balls over ten feet in the air and catch them in her mouth. I don't really know if this is true OR false as I have never put it to the test. I will let you know at a later date;)

9) She likes to sing a song called 'Tits & Whiskey'. Mary Prankster...she ROCKS!!

10) Her left foot only has four toes. False...each of my feet have all 5 digits.

11) She had to call her parents less than a week after her wedding to ask for bail money for her new husband. I digress...this is the truth. He was picked up on an old warrant for restitution owed from a moment of total and udder stupidity.

12) A punkrock band named 'Suspicious Mole' wrote a song about seeing her beat up a gas station attendant with a squeegee. heh...false.

13) She once tried to poison someone by soaking bread in bleach, and making them a sandwich with it. OK...for the gazillionth time, it was an ACCIDENT!!! I had sprayed a bleach solution on the kitchen counter to clean it. (we lived in a really old and nasty house...and I was pregnant and trying to sterilize every hard surface I could...) Denotsko decides to make a sandwich...not noticing that the counters were completely fucking SATURATED when he placed his bread in them. It was soooo NOT my fault.

14) Her highschool yearbook photo features her holding a stuffed unicorn and wearing leather pants. False...I have never owned a stuffed unicorn...or leather pants.

15) She may have a warrant for her arrest in at least one state. This may have been true at one time, but I am sure that the statute of limitations has since expired.

16) She was once a volunteer fire fighter. This is true.

17) Her nude image can be found on at least one internet site. I am not saying that it is impossible...but it is highly unlikely.

18) She was part a group of hooligans that destroyed an entire floor of a hotel in a drug crazed party-gone-riot. Yeah...it was at the very Dead show during which Denotsko and I got together. I will say that the destruction of the top floor of this hotel and the circumstances that led me to that point are not among my most proud moments.

19) She is ambidextrous. False...although I can do anything but write with both hands.

20) She voted for Ross Perot. ummmm....no. I am not even sure I was old enough to vote when Ross Perot ran?!?

so, what gives???

I see the number on my stat counter climbing (albeit, slowly) and even know who most of you people are, who check my site on a semi-regular basis...so why is it that nobody has thought it worthy of their time to comment on my last post??? I have the answers at the ready, but it seems pretty anti-climatic to post them, now.

Also...That Guy I Married is officially an Army Retiree. WOO HOO!

waking up at the crack of Dawn

Originally posted November 15, 2005.

Well, well,well. Guess who gets to wear the dress today. It is I, denotsKO the wonder babe! I have been asked to post on Pockets of Resistance today so that I can offer to you a challenge. I have here 20 questions about justdawn, or as I like to call her, um....well...just Dawn. Where was I? What was my point? You, her humble readers of her rants and raves, get to attempt to answer as many of these questions with a true or false. The person who answers the most correctly wins a prize. What could I possibly have to offer as a reward for such an amazing feat? You get to be called a winner.

 

1) She was once known as 'spaghetti legs'

2) She was once threatened with arrest for offering to mail dog poo to a member of the Los Angeles Police Dept.

3) Friends were ordered to tell the story of her prom date's 'accident' to a judge under oath.

4) She eats three different kinds of fruit daily.

5) She once owned a car with the words PARTY TIME written on the side.

6) Her father has been known to enjoy the sight of small dogs humping people's heads.

7) She has five tattoos.

8) She can spit ping-pong balls over ten feet in the air and catch them in her mouth.

9) She likes to sing a song called 'Tits & Whiskey'.

10) Her left foot only has four toes.

11) She had to call her parents less than a week after her wedding to ask for bail money for her new husband.

12) A punkrock band named 'Suspicious Mole' wrote a song about seeing her beat up a gas station attendant with a squeegee.

13) She once tried to poison someone by soaking bread in bleach, and making them a sandwich with it. 14) Her highschool yearbook photo features her holding a stuffed unicorn and wearing leather pants. 15) She may have a warrant for her arrest in at least one state.

16) She was once a volunteer fire fighter.

17) Her nude image can be found on at least one internet site.

18) She was part a group of hooligans that destroyed an entire floor of a hotel in a drug crazed party-gone-riot.

19) She is ambidextrous.

20) She voted for Ross Perot.

 

"O Tiger-lily,"

    

said Alice, addressing herself to one that was waving gracefully about in the wind. "I wish you could talk!"

"We can talk," said the Tiger-lily: "when there's anybody worth talking to."  ~Lewis Carroll

Consider the lilies of the field...

All I can say is that everything we have gone through with TGIM's impending medical retirement and his new job has caused me to really grow in my faith. It would have been nice if things had moved along more smoothly...but if given the chance to go back and do it all over again, differently...I don't think I would.

since I am totally incapable of stringing together my thoughts in an intelligible manner...

* I wonder if learning defensive driving in the United States and practicing offensive driving in Germany gives me any sort of advantage?

* When my kids play the game "Red Light/Green Light", they use the German traffic light pattern. (Red Light/Yellow Light/Green Light/Yellow Light/Red Light) This makes me chuckle.

* I have spent the past eight years being an Army wife...and next Tuesday I am going to be the wife of a civilian.

* I am fully aware of just how blessed we are. That Guy I Married landed a SWEET job as a Civil Servant and we get to stay in Germany! (Seriously...there were a LOT of people who wanted this job. TGIM is kind of an asshole. We SoOoOoOo do not deserve this good fortune. But I am very grateful for it.)

* The Army is withholding our last paycheck. We got our last pay check in mid-June. We won't get our next pay check until the beginning of August. Can you say "screwed"???

* I know that it is mostly our fault that we are screwed. We failed to save money. It is just that simple.

* But this is the thing...when you live at or below the poverty level for your entire adult life and you get a little bonus (like an income tax return) and you can make the kinds of frivolous purchases that you ordinarily can not...you sometimes tend to do just that.

* Without thinking about the impact it will have on your life six months down the road.

* Even though I feel guilt, I still love my Nikon D40.

* Once things are settled and we are getting regular pay checks again, I am going to be diligent about saving money.

* I will not have any excuse not to. Our allowance for housing is going to double. We are SoOoOoOo moving into a bigger house.

* We will be getting  an almost $20K raise in our base pay.

* And we will still get the Cost Of Living Allowance that helps offset the crappy exchange rate.

* And as a medical retiree, That Guy I Married will be pulling in a monthly retirement check.

* I think we might actually be moving on up. Middle class, Baby!

* I think it's about, freaking time.

* Also...the pounds are still coming off.

* I can see a little bit of a difference. I only have one chin!

* Sadly, the only other area in which I am seeing immediate results is in my bosom.

* Note to self: must wear supportive bra. AT ALL TIMES.

* Another note to self: consider plastic surgery to put all of your bits back in their proper places once this whole thing is done.

summer vacation?

Well, last Thursday marked the end of the school year for My Minions. In September, I will put all four of my kids on the bus...and then my life will begin. I am not sure exactly how I feel about that.

Elijah has been my constant companion for the past five years. Of my four kiddos, he and I just "click". Maybe it is because he is the most like That Guy I Married. Or maybe it is simply because he is the most easy going and laid back kid I have ever given birth to. Who knows? But what I do know is that I am really going to miss him when he starts school.

I have spent the past twelve years staying at home and raising my kids. I have done some volunteer work during that time, but for the most part, I have been fully devoted to just caring for them. I haven't felt compelled to finish my college education or to go out and find a job. Now??? I am facing the prospect of being a stay at home mom with no kiddos at home.

I am sure that I will really like it, at first. The freedom to come and go as I please. To go to the gym or the pool or to buy groceries without little hands grabbing for the junk food that I am so staunchly trying to avoid...but I get bored really easily. I just hope that I can figure out what I want to do with myself before I find myself in a funk.

As a side note...LOOK, MA! NO HANDS!!! I have been off my happy pills for almost a month, now. Turns out that simply eating right and forcing myself out the door and to the track every day is all I needed to do in order to feel good. Who knew??? Also, I dropped 7 pounds in the past week, for a grand total of 18 pounds lost from my all time highest weight. I am not physically seeing a difference yet, but I am certainly feeling it. And this morning when I bent down to tie my shoes...I noticed that I could breathe! (my fellow fatties will totally get this...everyone else just takes breathing while bent over for granted)

hmmm...anything else? Not really. I actually feel like the Internet and I are growing apart. Like maybe I have spent too much time fostering my online relations and in turn have neglected the real life people who have always been here for me. I have very few friends in real life...so I have always cherished the friends I have made online. I guess that I am finally feeling like I need something more than some words typed on a screen with their virtual (((hugs))) and LOL's.

Wow...this post is all over the place. See, Internet??? I am bored with you.

happy horseshit

You know, then other night when I posted that shallow little meme, I think I failed to convey the gravity of my situation, just then.

My dog was gone. Gone! She is a pretty neurotic pup and every since the fireworks fiasco of New Year's Eve, she has been a little bit more sketchy than usual. Pretty much, any time she hears thunder, gun fire (from the military firing range), garbage trucks, motorcycles, airplanes (I can see the flightline at Ramstein Air Base from my bedroom window) and did I mention thunder??? She crashes through the gate we have at the bottom of our stairs and hides in the bathtub until all is right in her world, again.

Well, on Sunday evening we had a pretty intense storm roll through here. She was outside with That Guy I Married and the kids when the first rumblings of thunder...er...rumbled, and she just bolted. Everybody was pretty distraught so about an hour later, when the storm passed, we set out to find her. In the 2+ years we have had her, she has never taken off like that. Since we all had to be up early the next morning, we had to stop looking at around midnight and go to bed.

The next morning I called for her, and she didn't come. We were pretty worried by then and so we started making phone calls. She is microchipped so I called the stray facility on base, first. They didn't have her, but put an alert in their system. We checked with the local tierheim, the Polezei and the fire department. She was nowhere to be found. I had just finished submitting an ad to the Stars and Stripes reporting her missing when I heard a thud at the back door. She was home. She was tired, thirsty, hungry, had almost an entire thorn bush tangled in her hair and was covered in (what I can only imagine to be) horse poo...but she was home.

I will admit that I spend a lot of time bitching about my dog. She is hairy (and therefore sheds...a lot), she barks rather incessantly, she tries to herd us into corners and she is just generally a spaz...but what this whole experience has proven to me is that I really, really love my dog and I am so glad she found her way back home.

flickr meme

Just passing time in between frantically screaming out my back door for my dog to come home and wringing my hands with worry. She took off during a thunderstorm almost five hours ago. It is almost dark outside. She is a Giant Pansy. This is SO unlike her.

Anyway, I stole this meme from my Good Friend, Lisa's blog. Here's what you need to do, if'n you want to do this, too.

a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into this Mosaic Maker.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. Dawn at Fishing Bridge, 2. Macaroni and Cheese, 3. Jade, 4. Greener Pastures, 5. Mike Ness of Social Distortion (NOT MINE), 6. coke.jpg, 7. Alaskan Cruise: Mt. Rainier over Seattle, 8. Brownies!, 9. Still2, 10. My family, 11. Complicated.....12. Not available

The Questions:

1. What is your first name? Dawn

2. What is your favorite food? Macaroni and Cheese

3. What high school did you go to? Woodbridge Senior high School

4. What is your favorite color? Green

5. Who is your celebrity crush? Mike Ness

6. Favorite drink? Coke

7. Dream Vacation? Alaskan Cruise

8. Favorite Dessert? Brownies

9. What do you want to be when you grow up? Certified Nurse Midwife

10. What do you love most in life? My Family

11. One word to describe you? Complicated

12. Your Flickr name? justdawn(673)