An Empty Chair

It's funny how quickly everything that seems important can fall to the way side with a single sentence.

Suddenly it doesn't matter that you're not a size 3. The silverware being mismatched is not longer an issue. It's no big deal that your salary doesn't allow for grand vacations or fantastic shopping sprees. Your car gas mileage doesn't mean anything anymore.

Everything that completely and totally consumes our everyday lives is suddenly trivial in the space of a heart beat.

When someone completely irreplaceable dies.
Gone.
Forever.

The ground falls out from underneath you.

Who cares how many calories were in the fucking bagel, or whether or not you can get organic produce?
Who gives a shit about the tear in the curtains or the mud in the carpet?

You hear those three, most dreaded words in the universe and everything stops. It stops moving, it stops mattering. And you fall.
Desperate to keep moving, keep doing, distract yourself enough and maybe the broken record inside your head will be drowned out. Maybe if you move fast enough you'll stop falling, maybe you'll fly. Maybe you'll reach the surface and see that it was all a nightmare.
But it's not. It's horribly, heartlessly, real. And there's not a thing you can do.

Gawk is dead.
She's gone.
I will never see her again.

Death is not something I handle very gracefully. I can't sleep. God I wish I could just sleep.
But if I stop, even pause to take a breath, I'll hear those three words again. And again. And again.

If you pray, say a prayer for her family. Her husband who is in the hospital, sisters one of whom is in the hospital, and parents. Please.

OHMG! Is that the Sun?!

Greetings Friends!

This is Ashes reporting from her less hectic life.
After a storm damaging our roof, killing most the garden, cuts to the military making our paychecks very very small, and buying a new car I finally have something good to post about! Yaaay!

I made a collapsible hula hoop. Oh yes. It's awesome! It's also way too big to hoop with in the house, but that's ok, I also made a smaller one. I went from -1 hula hoops to 2! It's amazing! *laughs*

Yup I'm purposefully sounding manic, for the hell of it.

Life really is doing better though. Our new car is super fancy. I told my friend, because you can TALK to my car, that I really want to make all kinds of Star Trek references when I'm in it. I've already asked it about sky net. It says it doesn't know anything, but I know the truth. *laughs* Still haven't figured out why it won't recognize my phone so I can tell it to call people.
Oh yes. It calls people for me. Well it would if it would recognize my phone! I think the car thinks it's better than my cell. My cell is, after all, not a 'smart' phone. It just has a fold out tactile keyboard. (I totally just tried to spell fold as phold, what the heck brain?)

I'm still trying to learn more hoop tricks, but I fail, and comically hit myself in the face or launch the round piece of irrigation tubing at my husband. Though I think that one might be a little bit of karma.

Oh, and I'm going to be a Zumba instructor. Soon. I'm so excited, and freaked out. One the one hand it'll be a fun job and I'll never have to actually 'work out' in the traditional sense ever again. Score!
On the other hand, I'm not so awesome with strangers.
As you've noticed by my choice of words and references I'm kind of awkward. My kind typically are. Throw computer parts at me and I can help you, throw a room full of strange women, maybe even a token male, and I might be able to help you... maybe... it depends.
Luckily the first class I'll be teaching will be all the really rad elderly people from the church Jex and I hang out at. Who knows, maybe I'll get a kids class after that and work my way up to the frightening mass that is my peer group.
But that's off in the shadowy future.

Till next time my lovlies!
God is good, but don't dance in a small boat.
 PS, I don't know why but I have this urge to post pictures of the wreck.

Notice how our car, the red one, is trashed while the silver one took next to no damage. Figures.
Good news is that my knee is finally healing. I smashed the ever loving crap out of it on the steering column when we collided.

The moral of the story; Honda beats Ford in Life Paper Scissors.

Where have I been?!

So sorry to have been absent.

The universe has decided to take a huge dump right on top of my life.

Most recently our car got totaled. Not too bad because no one was hurt or anything...
But today the other party in the accident decided that they were injured.
That's just great.

So now I'm going to see what precautions I need to take to keep them from trying to take everything Jex and I have worked so hard to build up.

If anyone has been in this situation let me know how it went for you. I can use all the advice I can get. I really think I'm at the end of my mental rope.

Hopefully I'll have a happier post for you guys later.

Talking to my self

Ever have those days when it feels like you're talking to yourself?
I'm not talking about not getting comments on your blog or being ignored by your spouse; I'm talking you're staring at the bread in the Grocery store and you realize that your thoughts are no longer silent.
You realize that while analyzing the contents of two competing whole wheat breads that your mouth butted in on your private conversation and decided to alert the whole world. It's like that part in those kids movies when the inventive  and capable hero kid hits the on button on the intercom so that the evil bad guy's words are broadcast for all to her. Yay! the dictator is toppled there's confetti, ribbons, and cake.
Only it's not that fun in real life. Of course when you glance around there's some big white lady giving you the 'oh-my-god-i-hope-i-don't-catch-crazy' look and some young mother shielding her child from your ravings. Or worse, a really nice dude who just smiles at you hoping that you merely smile back and turn away so he can escape before you try and talk to him.

I don't know if this happens to you, but it's happened to me a lot recently. I hate my mouth.

Also the people I talk to randomly disappear. Well, not really disappear so much as they wander off in the middle of talking to them.
For example I'm doing dishes and talking to Jex who's sitting at the computer table close by. He's totally responding. So I continue, hear nothing, then turn to find he's gone.
Or even worse, what you say gets totally ignored.
This I blame on society though. We're all bent on what we have to say rather than what others have to say... not that I can say much about that without being a complete and total hypocrite; I'm a blogger. *nervous smile* But really when you say "Wow it's really grey out today. Do you think it'll rain?" and the other person responds with. "Let me tell you if that **** doesn't call me back I'm gonna kill him. You know how frustrating it is to wait on some one else before you can do anything?"
"I'm a military wife, so yeah."
"You have to put yourself into .... blah blah... two whole days.... blah blah blah..."
"You just want to complain don'cha?"
"blah blah I can't hear you blah blah blah."

I'm convinced that I'm crazy or I blink out of reality for these moments. What other explanation is there... other than that I'm boring... which is probably true.
What?
I'm in my 20's and I quilt. The vast majority my friends in the area are over 50 (which I maintain is totally cool but other people find quite strange). I write stories I tell no one about because, well, I tend to run off to lala land and talk waaaaay too much about them.

But I'm going to fix that.
How? By dying my hair blue! That will fix everything! lol

No not really.
I think the next time I realize I'm talking to myself I'm just going to weird out everyone even more by turning it into a play.
Oh yeah, the epic bread duel. Only one will make it into the cart! Only the best with rise! Take that fiendish unbleached enriched flour take my whole grain fury! Oh but what's this Corn Syrup! Noooooooooooooooooooooo! *ala~luke skywalker*

When people disappear I'll keep talking as if they never left and I have schizophrenia... no better yet I'll turn to my imaginary friends Iv'gar the purple dragon and Fiffle the fire breathing fox and tell them about how rude the other person just was. (^_^) Then continue my conversation with their very pleasant, if a bit mythical, company.

Then when I comes to the latter I've decided to reply with sentences that make no sense and counting how many I can get away with before they noticed I'm not playing along.
Like this:
Ignorer: "If I don't get a text in the next 10 minutes we're done."
me: "And I'm sure the flying pig would agree, applesauce."
Ignorer: "I mean really is this how you treat people? It's just rude."
me: "So are mudkips I hear." *nods sagely*
Ignorer: "Two whole days and not a word back. Seriously."
me: "Even the magic academy isn't that capricious."
Ignorer: "Capricious?"
me: "I think I used that word right."
Ignorer: "What the hell are you talking about."
me:*smiles brightly* Two points for me!

But the boring thing I am going to fix by dying my hair blue. People with blue hair are much more interesting than people with normal hair colors. No really. I'll put up pictures with ISpy this coming Thursday.

The Light Heart Lives Long~
till next time my lovlies

P.S. I will finish telling you about the Sunshine Trip. This was just on my mind today... or rather on my mouth as it began flapping about halfway through the thought. lol

Sunshine Trip: Day 3

We woke up to babies. Apparently tiny people don't need sleep like big people do. They had kept Cait up all night and then decided to be done with Druid and Faeriman's spare bedroom.
Which was really lame because we'd decided to sleep until late that day. You know not get up at the ass crack of dawn and get on the road as the first few tendrils of light are shining IN YOUR FACE. But what had to be done had to be done.
This turned out to be the day of God's timing.
I also think this is the day we heard Drunk Grandma preaching on the radio... if it's not it's close enough...
Anycrazydesertradioprograms, we got on the road and made good time. Everything was going along swimmingly. No really. The babies realized that they were going to be in their seats for longer than they wanted to and simply dealt with it. Nymnym was still kinda afraid of the trailer but she'd stopped sitting on my head when I was in back with the babies.
I think this is also the day that Jex sat in back with the babies. He did amazingly well for a dude who is still a little weirded out by tiny humans. He still won't touch a diaper though, wuss.

We got to our dusk fill up and discovered that Jex had completely rearranged the back seat. There were spaces on either side of the car seat because of the way they sat in the Explorer. He'd filled those spaces up to give the person in the middle more leg room. Nice. But we'd have to roll down the windows to get the babies out. Not a problem actually. The car seats held the kids up just about even with the window ledge so it wasn't too bad.
We filled up, changed diapers, got much needed caffeine. Everything was going swimmingly, there was even grass for Nymnym to pee on... oh that right I didn't tell you, when we got to the desert Nymnym wouldn't pee because there was no grass. We're pretty sure she held her bladder for an entire state, maybe even a state and a half.

We started to pull out and I rolled up the windows, most of them anyways. You see, Kitten's window wouldn't roll up. Jex and Cait were trying to wiggle it and force it and everything as I pulled slowly out of the truck stop. Nothing was working. Which was strange because we've never had problems with that window, ever.
Kitten is his father's son, it gets to be 70 degrees and the boy gets shivery. And it was fast approaching night time, in the desert, in December. So after a while we pulled over and tried to fix the window.
We dissected it and called AssbreakerTony when we couldn't figure out what the crap was going on. There was also this little beagle hound mix little squatty legged dog that kept trying to steal Jex's tools and come home with us. To add some craptastic frosting to the frustration cake we pulled over near a railroad crossing. Between the conductor purposefully (oh it was totally on purpose) blowing the horn to freak us out (and it worked I shrieked and jumped in a full circle before figuring out what happened. Apparently train horns turn off my intelligent brain and replaces it with Derp) but when we were troubleshooting the window with Tony trains would come by and make it near impossible to hear him.

Day turned to night. Then the phone started to die.

Luckily my husband is made of awesome. He used to be an electrician and we just happened to have a length of copper wire left over from trying to fix the tail lights on the trailer.
Jex hotwired the window.
I'm not kidding. It was great and amazing and there was much rejoicing.

So we climb back into the car and go to get back on the highway and the highway is a parking lot. Jex says it's ok because the access road will take us all the way into Gallup, where we've decided we will be eating dinner.
Why was the highway a parkinglot? Another wreck. But here is where it turns into some super rad, this can't just be coincidence, stuff. When we pulled over Cait was watching the road when the lights on the highway went all crazy. If we hadn't pulled over we probably would have been in that wreck.
Not only that but the delay made it possible for us to eat at Grandma's Burritos in Gallup (that's really the name of the town, it's in New Mexico. I usually don't use town names because OPSEC is burned into my brain. But no, if you ever go through I want you to know the best place to eat EVER!). Which was amazing.
Adovado with green chili. Best thing in the universe next to fresh Tirimisu and German Goulash. 

We ended up driving through the night because it made sense and the babies were being awesome. And it was good, for a while.

The light heart lives long~

Froliche Silvester! Sunshine Trip: Day2

Happy New Years my lovlies!
I'm so excited! While ending things sucks mega for me there's nothing quite as invigorating or exciting than something beginning. New Years is my favorite part of the holiday cycle. Thanksgiving and All Hallows Eve are, by far, my favorite holidays; they just don't fill me with the same kind of buzzing thrum of energy that New Years does.
It's a NEW Year! Perfect, shiny, and fresh with that clean 'out of the dryer' smell. A blank slate for you to scribble with every hope and dream. A new place to meet new people and do new things. Second Chances and rainbows and Unicorns. Hehehehe. Seriously though, it feels like cresting a mountain ridge to see a valley below in all it's glory.
Sure danger and pitfalls lurk below the swaying life of the canopy. That's just part of the adventure; the play of light and shadow that makes life Life. It doesn't really matter, because at the beginning of the new year we are able to really see that light part of life unhindered. I don't know why but it's the one time we really let our hopes fly and our hearts sing for joy at the prospect of the future. We see the possible good instead of the probable bad, and it's so nice.

~*~*~

Sunshine Trip: Day 2

I count the time in the Motel 6 as part of Day 2 because we checked in at something like 1:30 in the morning and didn't get to actually sleep till 3 or so.

We pulled up to the Motel 6, completely done. Jex ran in and got the room and we made a plan. Because when you're on an adventure plans are made, otherwise it's not a proper adventure now is it? We decided that Jex would drive first thing in the morning, Cait would get whatever extra sleep she could in the passenger seat and I'd be on baby duty, catnapping when they did. Cait would drive then finally me. It was a good plan, since we didn't think Jex would fit between the car seats.
We forgot that Motel 6's are all pet friendly. So, Jex was going to sleep in the truck with Nym. I helped Cait with the babies and deposited them in the room so that I could go back and get the overnight bags and diapers. Because Every Single Time we stopped they pooped. I'm not kidding, it was weird, it's like they planned it that way. About the same time as I was walking out the door Cait said something to the effect of : "Wait a minute. Nym can come in the room with us. Jex can sleep in a real bed tonight."
Yay!
I joyfully tell my man. And he gives me this look. I haven't been given this exact look before so I don't know what to call it. Maybe his 'yeah right' face? In any case he doesn't look convinced, but he says he'll try it. We leave the truck set up for sleeping though, as a plan B. Because this is a Grand Adventure, plan B's are necessary... actually it's probably because Jex is the king of planning. For any given circumstance he has at least 3 courses of action, and that's if the event takes him off guard.
Anyparanoia, we get back to the room and what do you know. Gwendol and Kitten are running full speed in circles like some kind of crazy miniature nascar race. Cait has rearranged the room so that they can't pull anything down on their little heads and looks bedraggled. As if in the space of 30 seconds she did all of the moving; which I wouldn't doubt honestly, those kids are quick.
I have no idea how they had so much energy, or where it came from, or why it had to come out. I just wanted to whine: "It's bed time." Curl up onto the bed, pillow, floor, didn't matter and pass out.
Instead I took a shower and tried to sleep. The lights turned off but the babies didn't.
Eventually Jex went out to the truck and slept. I think Cait and I slept, maybe the babies passed out at some point. I just remember being awakened by Gwendol cuddling up next to me and patting my face mostly nicely.
Cait wanted to shower and went to shower, guess what? The light wasn't working. Last night it had worked fine with I showered, when Jex got ready for bed, but now for some unknown reason it wasn't working. Cait however is undaunted by such paltry things as utter and complete darkness. She simply ground her teeth and used her cell phone like a flashlight and took a shower in the mostly dark.
We packed up and got on our way.

Here is where things get blurry for me. I don't quite know what fit into the second and third day, and the fourth day is more of a blur because we drove through the night and stuff. I'll try to recount it truly.

On the road again we made it to our next fill up station, and realized that the Horrific Swampworld roads had severed the ropes that held the tarps on over Cait's stuff... and there was a drill hanging from the back of the trailer. Thus I was pulled away from my Huddle House breakfast to help my frustrated man fix the issue. Huddle House isn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. No really, I've eaten at Waffle Houses before and they are some shady, shady, places with some questionable food. Not this place, maybe it was the one great Huddle House in all the U.S. but it was actually really yummy. And I didn't feel sick afterwards like I do at Denny's.
At long last we made it to Texas. That would be the entirety of our trip that day, the Great Country of Texas.  We passed the big "Welcome to Texas, the Lone Star State" sign. We passed the huge flags flapping proudly from their massive flag poles. Then we passed this overlarge electronic marquis sign board that read: "Drive Safe. Deaths on Texas roads this year. 2795."
I don't know if it was the lack of sleep or the fact that the babies were actually being ok, but we just about died. "Welcome to Texas, DEATH!" "Hello! Don't Die Here!" We mad bad jokes and giggled and worried and chuckled and it was great. Until we got to Dallas and passed another one of the large electronic signs.
The number was updating itself.
We'd been driving for 3 hours; there were now 2798 deaths on Texas roads. A person an hour. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
You see, humor is a great way to keep your sanity. I don't know why but it's the same with anyone in the line of work that deals intimately with life and death. Whether a soldier, a paramedic, a fire fighter or an immediate family member we all have the same dark humor.
I laughed. I felt afraid and sad, but I laughed.

We saw another wreck that day with the Jaws of Life in use on an SUV. And that night we made it to Druid and Faeriman's home to sleep. Oh Precious Sleep.

The Light Heart Lives Long~

The Sunshine Trip: Day 1

I forgot to mention that on the way up to Sandland we discovered that the Explorer was infested with grey wolf spiders... and we had no turn signals on the trailer... but that's another story that involves the Department of Motor Vehicles, my Brother-in-Law Sir Will, and three of the nine rings of hell.

Any-descent-into-the-unknown, Jex got back from his mission the night before we are to take off toward Sunshine. In the morning it's a mad dash for things forgotten, baby stuff, and keeping Kitten and Gwendol from exploding while the grown-ups (ha!) get everything packed up. Construction Duck decided to continue in his usual conflustering of everything going on and turned on his 360 and play games while the rest of us worked. I'm not mad... I'm disappointed. Another dude would've come in handy when we realized that Cait and I had completely misspacked the trailer.
Yeah.
T-minus 5 minutes to take off and we discover that we didn't distribute the weight properly while we were playing tetris with all of Cait's worldly possessions. Luckily we're all badasses and had the trailer unloaded, reloaded, and secure in a little over one hour. That's 2,000 pounds of crap my friends.

At long last we backed up to the trailer, hooked the badboy on, and were off.

I don't know if you've ever embarked on such an adventure. If you have you'll understand what I'm about to say. Nothing, absolutely nothing, feels quite like pulling out of the driveway at the start of a journey you've never made before. Jex and I had been to the Sunshine State once before for my best buddy Kai's 21st birthday. But that time we left from Texas not the east coast, and we didn't have a 2 year old, a teething 1 year old, a dog, and their mommy with us.

We drove far enough for the world to start losing its color, but not its heat. It was december and I was pumping gas in a tank top. Then again I also lived in places that got, on average, 2-5 feet of snow in the winter.
Not but a few hours into the trip we saw the first of what would be many events. We saw our first wreck. These weren't little fender bender wrecks, no, these were people parts and cars turned into confetti wrecks.
The wreck we saw at this time was a delivery van, crunched like a coke can, the wind shield beside it and crumpled like a shiny sheet of paper. On the road in front of it was a MedEvac Helicopter. Beside it was a Semi with a dented fender. They were carrying a man that had been in the crushed van to the helicopter as we drove by. He was in one piece at least. Other wrecks would leave us wondering later on down the road. (haha! Down the road, hehe, oh shut up I know it was a bad pun)

Even with Kitten's teething screams, and Gwendol's cries of rage that she'd been in her car seat for entirely too long we made it into the night. We contemplated driving through the night. Not only were we nearly 4 hours behind schedule, but we hadn't counted on driving under 70, the trailer was at its weight limit and we were pushing it by going 60.

Then Gwendol woke up... as a Pterodactyl. I'm not kidding. The kid was done, absolutely and 100% finished with her car seat, the car, and everyone in the car.

So we decided that for the sake of life, limb, and sanity to pull into the Motel 6 that wasn't too far down the road. And that was an adventure in of it'self.

~*~     ~*~     ~*~     ~*~      ~*~

Happy Feast of the Birthday my lovely readers!
Tis the Season for all kinds of joy and shinies and all things not on the 'healthy diet' list.
The end of one year and the beginning of the next.

I'd like to know how you all are planning on spending this time.

Jex and I are running the Christmas Gauntlet with his family this year. Why is it a Gauntlet? 6 houses in 9 hours. That's why it's a Gauntlet. Jex's parents are divorced, his grandparents are divorced, and we have some of his step-dad's family to visit too. It's crazy.

Till next time.
~The light heart lives long