New! From Ronco!!!

Are you already a member of Mensa? Do you surf the universe using Einstein’s theories because they are just so damn easy for you? Can you converse with most of the commuters on the New York subway…in their native languages? Okay, face it, you’re brilliant. And, what do brilliant people need during a deployment? Brilliant people need a distraction to keep their lightning-quick minds off the separation. Brilliant people will certainly benefit from a true challenge. Challenges are what life is made of, people. They inspire you to become more than the sum of your parts, they get the blood flowing, and the swearing, too. But, we’ll get to that in a minute.

Ronco kept all this in mind when they developed the latest challenge for smart people. Ronco, makers of the “Chop-o-matic,” the “Dial-o-matic,” and, my personal favorite, the “Five Tray Food Dehydrator” (it makes jerky out of Tofu, otherwise known as Tofurkey Jerky…yumm…sorry, having a moment here!), have come up with a brand new product!

It slices, dices, minces, and chops…your brain! Let me spend a moment extolling the virtues of their newest product:

- Convenient Design
- Fits in Your Glove Compartment
- It’s the Best Gift You Can Give a Child or an Adult
- It’s Always Ready for the Fish to Strike…oh, wait, sorry, wrong product. That was meant for the Ronco Pocket Fisherman Spin Casting Outfit. No, I’m not kidding. And, Ronco is celebrating its 50th Anniversary. Happy Anniversary to them!

Anyway, back to the product at hand: Irish Gaelic. Now, stay with me, brilliant people. You want a challenge to overcome while your beloved is overseas? Why not teach yourself a language that is endangered? Less than 1% of the population in Ireland speaks Irish Gaelic. If you’re like me, you, too, are a sucker for anything endangered: baby seals, baby tigers, languages with fewer than 500,000 speakers. Why not help out? Learn to speak one of the Celtic languages and keep them alive. Okay, I’m going to shift gears here and tell you ‘why not.’

It’s ridiculously, insanely, ludicrously, preposterously HARD, people!!! That’s why! I now truly grasp why it’s an endangered language. Those crazy Celts have stolen all the vowels from the former Soviet-Bloc countries’ languages and shoved them into their own words. It’s not that they pronounce them or anything; they just sit there, along with a passel of other letters, taking up space, mocking any attempts at pronunciation. For example:

fheabhas – it means excellent – it’s pronounced ‘ous’
What the hell? Not kidding, here! What about the f, the two h’s, and a b for pity’s sake? You don’t pronounce them? Okaaaaaay. Next!

Tá orm dul abhaile anois, a Bhríd.
It’s pronounced ‘TAW* OH-ruhm duhl uh-VWAHL-e uh-NISH, uh VREED.’ It means I must go home now, Bridget.
Me, too, Bridge, cuz I have no idea what you people are talking about. To make matters worse, if she’s a Bridget you don’t know it’s spelled Brid and pronounced Breed; if she’s your friend and you’re talking to her, it’s spelled Bhrid and pronounced Vreed. Now, do that with all the names and words that refer to people, things, well, nouns, in general. Auuuuuugghhhh! What??? So my husband is pronounced and spelled differently than a generic husband? Well, that goes without saying, he’s a Seal after all, and as he always says, his ego protects him from negative emotions. Now, how the hell am I supposed to say all that in Gaelic?

Really, what I’ve learned is that I MAY not actually be a genius or brilliant, at all, but the Celtic languages still interest me. From this group of people have come some of the great myths I still enjoy reading about. From the Welsh, comes Taliesin, Merlin’s father. (Forget learning the Welsh dialect, it’s even harder than Irish!) Faeries populate a lot of their mythology and literature, as well. And, as Michael and Ash discovered, I loves me some faeries!! (Fireflies, faeries…it’s all the same to a girl from Idaho!) So, I keep working at this “challenge” a little bit every day.

I’m just thankful that I really don’t have to pay Ronco for the language tapes. Talk about adding insult to injury. (I’m sure they’d keep the price down, though. Pay just a mere $9.99 if you call in the next ten minutes, and they’ll even throw in Welsh and the really, really, really endangered language of Manx from The Isle of Man. Twelve people and forty five cats with bobbed tails live there, I think.) I’ve been using a great, free website called Erin’s Web to learn Gaelic. I've included it in my favorites above, and I recommend it to anyone who wants to trail their toes in the Celtic language and culture.

I can now truly appreciate how smart the Irish are; if they can learn this absurdly complicated form of communication then I think they may just be able to fix the banking woes of the world. And, I can honestly say that trying to learn this language does, indeed, distract me from the fact that the hubby isn’t around. It’s probably better that he’s away, as I’m learning to swear in Gaelic now…at least I think it’s Gaelic…the leprechauns blush when they hear me, anyway. I’d like to have it perfected before the husband gets home! I don’t want him to think I was sitting around letting my brain rot, eating Tofurkey Jerky the entire time he was gone. There's no accounting for taste, I guess. :-)

Origins

When you find yourself, as you inevitably will at some point during the deployment, really frustrated by the whole experience (your beloved being cleaved from your bosom and all that jazz) and wondering what the hell you’re doing letting the US government boss you around again, take a few moments to remember the story of your origin. I’m not talking about Adam and Eve, or the Giant Turtle with the world on his back, or the Serpent wrapped seven times around the water pitcher type of origin story, I mean YOUR story. Your story of how you and the aforementioned beloved got together. Sometimes, when the middle of the relationship gets iffy due to military orders and lengthy, bothersome separations, remembering how and why the hell you picked this dude or chick in the first place can really put everything in perspective for you.

Now our story got started a lot earlier than you might think. To track our story, we have to go all the way back to me meeting Husband Number 2. Yeah, I know, they all have names, but I keep it simple when I’m sharing stories in the classroom and just number them. It’s easier for everybody involved. And, in honor of my current husband, I do call him exactly that, Current Husband, as opposed to numbering him. To be fair, this particular smart-ass refers to me as his First Wife. :-) Anyway, the universe did have to collude to get me together with my Current Husband (otherwise known as the Right One…Finally), so I’ll start at the beginning. I promise not to bore you too much.

I met Husband Number 2 while stationed in California and our first date was on the beach. I had to study but he was interested in body surfing for a while which was fine. He would wave periodically as I slogged my way through spacecraft diagrams, and it certainly seemed like he was having a lot more fun than I was. However, he told me the real story when he made it back to the beach a few hours later. He’d been catching some decent waves for a while, but at some point he got caught in a riptide and was being towed down the beach and out to sea. I didn’t know what was happening and kept reading my satellite texts, not that I could have saved him anyway…the ocean has proven on many occasions that she hates me and has tried to drown me at least four times. Thank you, Current Husband, for fishing me out every time. I know, I know, it takes a village to raise this idiot! :->

Okay, meanwhile, back in the water with Husband Number 2. He told me later that he didn’t want to alert me and have me get caught in the same riptide but was kind of bummed that he met the woman he wanted to marry, just to drown in front of her. While this was going on, he said he thought about his parents. Sadly, he had already lost them both by the age of 26, and he thought he’d spend his last few minutes just kind of talking with them. He said that as he talked with them, a feeling of peace came over him and he figured he could handle drowning. At that moment, he felt a presence, a pair of eyes on him. He looked around, expecting, perhaps, to see the spirits of his parents, and was shocked to see a pair of bright, black eyes staring at him from just above the ocean. A seal had come to check him out, to see what all the fuss was about. Right after that, Number 2 felt a bump against his legs; the seal had nudged him. He thought, “Well, crap, this cute little guy wants to play and all I can do is drown, instead. This sucks! I’d love to play, little buddy, but I’m doing all I can to keep my head above water right about now.” Soon after that, the seal came up under his legs and pushed him all the way to the shore until he could gain purchase with his feet. He staggered up to me, flopped on the beach blanket, and pointed out his savior to me. The seal was still bobbing in the water very close to the shore.

The next weekend, we went out to try some ocean kayaking in the same area with a guide. As we started paddling through the water, a seal popped up right beside us. The guide was stunned and said that seals didn’t usually get that close to humans, and weren’t normally around this particular beach. We jokingly referred to it as my then-husband’s seal. He showed up every time we went to that beach. He was beautiful, with huge bright eyes, long eye lashes, and, I swear, a great smile on his face. He seemed to count himself as Number 2’s guardian and hung out until we both moved away from California.

As the marriage went on, we would periodically refer back to the seal and how much he had meant to us. The marriage itself became more difficult as time went on, and I can remember on my darkest days that I would silently ask the universe for my own seal. I hated that I was jealous of his seal, but I desperately wanted one, too. I knew I needed this figurative guardian to keep me from drowning, as well. The marriage wound to a close and we divorced. When I was ready, the universe got involved again. And, the universe knows, just like my parents do, that I can be both stubborn and obtuse, so if help was to be offered, it had to come in a crystal clear form. Amazing how smart the universe is, people!

A year later, I had started a new job in a new office as a reservist and was really enjoying it. One Monday morning at shift change, I looked across the room into the biggest, brightest eyes I’d ever seen, with lashes I’m still jealous of. “Ah, there you are,” I remember thinking immediately. And, as I looked at the name tapes on his BDUs, I somehow wasn’t surprised to read the name SEAL. I had to laugh. The universe definitely didn’t want me to screw this up again. I had finally found my Seal. The universe conspired to give me the guardian I had asked for. And, for once, I didn’t ignore the signs, and I did ask him to marry me. (Again, scariest thing ever, people! EVER!)

I told this story to one of my English classes on the last day of class, and after I released everyone for the summer, one of my students approached me. She is one of my favorite people now, but she frustrated me initially because she was so much like I was when I was that age. I know it made her cranky when I first told her that too, but I think she came to understand that stubborn knows stubborn and we pushed each other the entire year. She made me a better teacher, and I like to think I made her a better writer. She waited until the rest of the class had left, gave me a hug and said, “You know you’ve become your own Seal now. You don’t need a guardian. You’ve become who you always wanted to. Be proud of that.” Well, holy crap!! She’s wise, that one!

Hence the tattoo.

And, his name. Ta’ Me’. It means “I am” in Gaelic.

So, Baby, even though we’re apart for a while longer, every time I look at my tattoo, I think of how we met. And, I think of how you helped me become who I was always meant to be.

And, to everyone else, think about how and why you became a couple or a family. I know you all have cool and interesting “Origin” stories to share with the universe.

Peace!

Be A Dr. Doolittle

Okay, people, I can tell by your overwhelming response that the majority of you are not yet lining up at your local tattoo parlor to get some new ink while your mates are deployed. (Keith, I’m glad you’re interested in getting a new one, too. Let me know if you need me to come along to entertain you. I’m willing to travel!) So, I’ll just have to come up with some brand new advice that more of you might be willing to try. Let’s see…

Ah! My next gambit to encourage sanity sans spousal units… How 'bout chatting with your kids while your other half (in some cases I would say, ‘better half,’ but not in every case!) is gone? They are entertaining, inject some levity into the household, and only hack up hairballs twice a year: the first six months and the second six months. Oh, you thought I meant real, two-legged kids? Well, for those of you that have them, yes, by all means, chat with them, but for those of you with four-legged kids, you, too, can interact verbally with your pets. (Fair warning: people tend to look askance at you if you ‘borrow’ their kid for a chat. It’s usually best to ask first and even better if you know them!) For those of you with both types of kidlets, I think you’ll find from the following transcripts that the conversations can be eerily similar.

The Directive Conversations: Those of you with two-year-old children may recognize yourselves in my chats with my cats over the last few weeks.

The Mama: Spit that out! -- Usually well after something noxious has been ingested and just prior to seeing it again on the floor, slightly chewed.

Lucky: Uuurrrrppp!
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The Mama: Get your head out of there! It’s going to get stuck! – Always AFTER the stuckee is raising holy hell about being stuck in the cabinet, the drawer, the chair rungs, etc. Augh! CATS!

Lucky: Duh! Mama, that would have been great advice about thirty seconds ago. I mean…MWROWR!
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The Mama: Get off your sister! -- That one tends to cause the neighbors to peer cautiously in the windows.

Zoe: ROOOOWWWWWWR!

Neekie: What??!! I’m not doing anything!
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The Mama: Very funny. Scoot over! It’s the mama’s bed! Can’t I have a little room? – I had no idea that three cats could take up more room than my husband. Ah! That actually makes me miss him more…he’s easier to scootch. My cats engage gravity and sink completely into the mattress, not to be ootched, scootched, or shoved. I’ve heard that two-year-olds have the same innate talent.

Lucky, Neekie, Zoe: Nuh-uh! ZZZZZzzzzzz!
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Zoe: Get up, get up, get up! Feeeeeeeeeeeed meeeeeeeeeee! – All of this at about o’dark thirty every morning, or as I lovingly refer to it, the butt-crack of dawn. I swear she has a watch that she sets every night, just to crank me off.

The Mama: Shhhhhhh! Mama’s sleeping. I know there’s food in your dish. Get out of the bedroom! – I’ve been told it comes out more like, “nnuuuuhhhhnnnn…out!”

Zoe: Not anymore!!!! :->
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Wow! See how all of this can keep loneliness at bay! Chatting with kids and pets can be fun! Besides, people will think you’ve gone batshit crazy if you talk to yourself, so just yak at your kids or your cats/dogs, no one will even notice. As if on cue, as I write this, Zoe, the 22 pound gray hassock of a cat has just gotten on top of the fridge (for a hefty girl, she’s got better ‘ups’ than Neekie) and crawled into Lucky’s hidey-hole. He loves it because we store the grocery sacks in it, so it’s full of “crinklies.” She’s waiting in ambush. She just asked me not to tell him. And, since he’s usually the aggressor, I’ll let her jump him. Should be hilarious! I’ll see if I can get a photo of the hi-jinks to follow. Without too much of my own blood spilled, of course.

Ah, well, be sure to let me know how your own dialogues go. I’ve read a couple that Ashley and Leah posted and they do, indeed, seem eerily similar to the cat chats here at Kitty-Cat Central. And, lest you all think that I cease these pet tete-a-tetes when the hubby is around, just ask him. He usually has to check to see with whom I’m conversing. He’s lucky, if I’m yelling, it’s usually not him. I miss you, Baby, I’d like my bed back!

Do Something Every Day That Scares You (A Little!)

Today we’ll discuss another survival strategy that can help you through a deployment. To keep from stagnating at home, I encourage the staying-stateside- spouse to do something new. Something a little bit scary. Something that shakes the cobwebs out of the adrenaline system in your body. Ah, herein lies the rub, people! I have, indeed, come to realize that since I write this blog and suggest survival tactics, I should be willing to take my sometimes dubious advice, as well, and blog about it for your reading enjoyment. As the LOL Cat says, “I cannot brain today. I have the dumb.” This is also my excuse for taking my own advice. Sigh…

To take this advice I had to figure out something that scares me. Driving fast around a track in a car that I love? Been there, done that! Jumping out of a “perfectly good airplane,” as my Dad says? Hey! Let’s not get hasty! That scares me a LOT! Not a little. Asking someone to marry me? Holy Crap!! Scariest thing I’ve EVER done. Thank goodness he said “Yes.” Going to the dentist and listening to that awful drill? Yeah, that has promise. It’s scary and makes my ears whine. Going to the doctor for a flu shot? Yup, needles also freak me the heck out. Seeing blood, especially my own? Yup, the “eeeek-plop!” faint factor’s pretty high there, too. So, how do I combine all of these? By getting a tattoo with my friend Dani, of course, silly people!

We had planned to get tattoos together after a wedding in July in Vegas, but time and references might have been an issue, so we looked into doing them together in Tampa while I was visiting. And, serendipity was with us, the tattoo parlor with the best recommendations is called the Las Vegas Tattoo Company. Cool, huh? Nothing like the universe pointing a neon sign at a place for you, huh? It’s a great place filled with wonderful people, and again the universe gave us an artist named Fish to put a picture of an aquatic mammal on a chick named Seal. (He even offered to add a shark eating the seal on my arm if this marriage didn’t work out in the future. Very sporting of him I thought!) He did a great job customizing both Dani’s and my artwork and has a great sense of humor and a gentle bedside manner. They created beautiful floral scrollwork for her arm using bright colors and she ended up with what she wanted: something girlie! She’s a tough chica and went first. To her credit, she didn’t even do a swan-dive off the barber chair like yours truly, so she couldn’t earn the same high marks for a great landing. (Remember, I’m trying to take my own advice in order to report back to y’all. So, in my defense, I was just combining some former survival tactics we’ve discussed. Changing the paint…on my body + changing my surroundings to shore up my dopamine stores + doing something that scares me, just a little. It worked. Dopamine, adrenaline. Box checked!) Her tattoo looks beautiful on her, is within regs because it will be under her uniform, and is, indeed, very girlie. And, I hope I earned my keep by telling stories to distract her while she was poked a gazillion times with tiny little needles. In the past I’ve been invited to tattoo places by other friends, as well, to keep their minds off the pain and heat. Ah, perhaps a new job is on my horizon: tattoo entertainer/distractionist. Hmm, maybe a bit too small of a niche market. If you hear of any openings, though, let me know. I’ll keep you posted on the job hunt.

For those of you who have never frequented a tattoo parlor, they’re not nearly as scary as you might think. The artists do what they do because they love it. Fish and I discussed the palette and canvas we each use in our respective arts. Neither of us can draw using pencil and paper, but he creates masterpieces using ink and bodies, while I craft my costume art using fabric and patterns. His specialty is photo realism which came in handy when I asked him to create a very real seal on my arm. One cartoon character on my body is enough. I wanted something realistic. The point of this tattoo was to put it where I could see it. I already have one…behind me. I forget about it for months at a time, until he (Tig-ger) sneaks up on me in the mirror once in a while. So, I thought to myself, why go through the pain of the tattoo if I’m not going to be able to look at it as much as I want? Note to self: count the number of nerves in a given body part BEFORE submitting to the needles, you maroon! Turns out, one’s forearm is full of them. Owww! Plop! Swoon! Who knew?!

I was told I was very polite about swooning. I told Fish he might want to put down the needle as I was going to pass out and, very promptly, did. Apparently, I slid down the front of the barber chair, to land upright with my legs beneath me. I didn’t even lose my gum. Now, there’s talent, people!! I woke up from a great dream with Dani holding one hand and Pat trying to keep my inked arm away from my clothes. Really, who wears white pants to a tattoo place? Umm... anyway. I told Pat that I dreamt we were all on one of the scuba diving boats with my legs trailing in the warm ocean – to which he replied, “Definitely not one of the dives we’ve been on together! During our first dive together, the ocean was 57 degrees.” True! But, I liked my dream. Anyway, after my swan dive, Fish arranged a chaise lounge so I could keep some blood in my head during the next couple of hours. Some students of mine would be convinced I passed out due to lack of a heart! I’m not sure they’d be wrong.

In the end, both Dani and I got what we wanted. We’re happy with our new tattoos and I have been able to battle-test some more of the deployment survival strategies to my satisfaction. I’m glad I now have a totally cute seal on my arm that I can look at every time I want to and think of my husband. Turns out both the seal and my husband are participating in Mustache March. I think my seal is going to win! But seriously, as I tell him, I’m still glad he said “yes” to my proposal. And, thank god his name is Seal and not Elephant or Dinosaur, as I don’t think I could have handled that much ink!

How to Pass (Out) Like a Pro

People have been asking lately about how to make time dash past more quickly during a deployment. The faster it flies by, the more quickly your sweetheart returns home, right? Right! So, for your edification, I have a few suggestions you might want to investigate further for yourselves.

1. Teenagers might be right. Sleep can be one’s best friend.

What one thing do most teens have in common no matter what school they attend or state they live in? They all know how to make a boring English class rush by more quickly. Ask them how and they’ll say, without a touch of sheepishness, “You just sleep through it! It’s over in a snap!!” As an English professor, I’ve been witness to many brilliant strategies in action. I’ve even involved my other students in awarding these championship sleepers style points for their public naps. It’s more fun when you do this as a group! Most in-class snooze-monkeys receive 5s for tilting a chair back and leaning against the wall. We’ve given an 8 to one somnambulant who made it into my class without waking up from his math class. He then leaned forward on a term paper that had yet to be turned in, and he proceeded to drool enough that the words on the top four pages began to look more like one of Monet’s watercolors. This student was awarded such high marks because the outcome was really quite artistic – actually, much more so than his writing ever was. :-)

My stand-out siesta queen did receive a belated 10 from the entire class. She arrived for class on Monday looking quite haggard after a weekend of…whatever it is teenagers do these days when out of sight of parents and professors. While her sleeping style was nothing to speak of - she put her head down on her book, pulled up her hood and nodded off - the length of her nap was impressive. After Monday’s class was over, I toyed with the idea of waking her up, but decided against it. After all, I still had to drive home and didn’t want to be on the road with a sleepy teenager who had earned a “D” on a paper from me the week before. On Wednesday, my class and I returned to the room to pick up where we had left off on Monday; we found her sitting in her chair, hood up, a puddle of drool on the desk around her face. Rip Van Winkle fans, take note. She had stayed there the entire time! (This was independently verified by other professors who also didn’t want to dislodge her from her seat during their classes. They, too, were flabbergasted by her commitment to unconsciousness.) Unbeknownst to her, she had mastered a deployment survival strategy. An entire two days scurried quickly by for her, thus expediting her week at school, hastening her toward another weekend of fun. Remarkable! Those of us who miss our mates during deployments might do well to emulate this Einstein and just sleep through most of the separation. But, if this works for us, I might have to re-evaluate the grade I gave her at the end of the class. She should have gotten an A!

2. Passing out is just like sleeping…isn’t it?

For most of us, sleeping through the separation is unrealistic. There are beds to be made, cat boxes to be cleaned, dinners to be burned. So, how about multiple short fainting spells? These swooning spells make time pass swiftly and, as a bonus, the fainter’s view tends to have changed radically upon awakening which, as we learned in an earlier blog, generates more dopamine in the physical system. Remember, dopamine is good for us. Go, Dopamine!!

Let’s list the myriad ways in which one can encourage fainting:

a. Insert mouse here…no, not the computer kind. EEEEEK! Plop! Time flies by!

b. Insert creepy-crawly here…anything with 6 or 8 legs will do. EEEEEK! Plop! ZZZZ!

c. Stand at parade rest with knees locked. Plop! Face, meet ground.

d. Stand near loved one when a limb gets poked, stabbed, or otherwise injured. Ewww! Plop!

And, last but not least,

e. Get a tattoo. One you really want. That really hurts. Owwww! Plop! Hey, is that a real tin ceiling??!!

More on the tattoo as deployment survival strategy in a future blog; it really works! And, it WAS a real tin ceiling. But, I’ll wrap up for now by summarizing our lesson. So, what we’ve discovered and tested thoroughly (Umm, I wouldn't really bank on that part. True scientists would laugh at us, and doctors might shudder.) is that losing consciousness for certain periods of time can, indeed, expedite a deployment. If you are willing to try any of the above tactics, please report back and we’ll make sure to include it in our VERY scientific study! :-)

What Not to Say During a Deployment

You’ve dropped your partner at the airport, you can blame the military for it, and now you’re ready to attack the deployment head-on. Good for you. You can do this! Remember, you didn’t hop out of the womb with your dearly beloved, you haven’t always been together…okay, I’ll leave the Arkansas jokes out of this! Just keep in mind that while your spouse is away, you may encounter a few issues regarding effective communication. We will try to address some of them here today, and I’ll include some solutions for your reading pleasure.

For many of you, you’ll be corresponding by letter or, more likely, email. Be mindful of the need to factor in the lack of eye-contact. You won’t be able to elbow your lovely husband in the ribs when you joke about the cute cabana boy (who really is your seventy-year-old neighbor with a peg leg who bears a strong resemblance to a pirate, and, in fact, not a twenty-one-year old hottie with ripped abs) who’s taking care of the yard. Your beloved may not be able to ascertain that from the timbre of your message…so be careful what you say. It will bite you in the butt later.

Those of you on Skype have it a little better. At least you can see your darling’s face and can figure out from the grimace on her face that she isn’t kidding about running over the garbage bin…with your Harley. Hmm, bad luck, that! Now seriously, it is a little easier to communicate when you can see the familiar gestures of your husband or wife, but with bandwidth at a premium, sometimes even those pictures are a little smudgy, jerky, and tough to read. As am I, I suppose. (And, really, people, what’s up with this Mustache March in the Military thing? It’s tough enough to see your fabulous and winsome facial expressions via Skype without the dead hamsters on your lips. Sheesh!)

So, onto the list of things that might be misconstrued by your adoring spouses due to technology errors, a misspelling, stupidity on the sender or receiver’s parts, or dead hamsters:

1. “Honey, about the car…”
a. The comment that can sink a marriage faster than icebergs meeting Titanics. Note to self, trying to power-wash away a dent isn’t the same thing as contacting Midas. Thankfully, cars can be replaced and you know you have a fabulous mate when the first thing he or she asks is whether or not you’re okay. However, it is normal, once they know you’re not crawling the halls of the emergency wing in the hospital, that they tell you they’re going to kill you themselves once they return home. Don’t worry, they don’t always mean it.

2. “Honey, about the cat…”
a. More egregious in nature, as they are damn near impossible to replace. The owner can usually spot a replacement cat at fifty yards. Maybe the hamster isn’t such a bad idea. I’m told you can swap whole families of those out with no one the wiser, other than the unfortunate hamster(s), of course.

3. “Honey, I held some punk kids at gunpoint in the yard today…”
a. Wow! Um, I don’t miss Albuquerque so much anymore…

4. “Honey, I’m having such a fantastic time without you! I hardly miss you at all…”
a. Okay, you’re a maroon! (Thank you, Bugs Bunny, for that insult.) You just said WHAT to your forever-and-ever-amen one-true-love? Were you dropped on your head multiple times? Are you a member of an EOD unit? That would explain such a response. NEVER, EVER say that again…even if you mean it. Trust me on this one, or you may have the EOD unit called to your house upon your return.

5. “Honey, I heard the song, Fat-Bottomed Girls today and thought of you…”
a. REALLY? Are you high? If you think you’re in a war-zone right now, just wait until you get home! Sometimes, song lists are better kept to oneself.

6. “Honey, about the hamster…”
a. ‘nuff said. Oops! There was an accident with the vacuum cleaner that your companion may not need all the gory details on. Those German whirling cleaners are hell on most small rodents. Eek! Don’t over-share.
Now that we’ve covered a few things NOT to say while your mate is deployed, let’s add a couple that should always earn bonus points:

1. “Wow, you look hot! In spite of the dead hamster on your lip.”
a. Sorry, baby. 

2. “Wow, you sound skinny over the phone!”
a. Always a good bet.

And, last but not least:

1. “Baby, I love you!”
a. No explanation necessary.
Happy Deployment to you all!

Dopamine – The Deployment Survivalist’s Best Friend

One of the things that gets highlighted every time my husband deploys or vacates the house for long periods of time is that the level of newness, or the “cool-osity factor,” as we call it, is much higher for him. He’s in a new place, with new people, doing new things. This can be tough for me, as I’m still scooping the same cat poop in the same basement wearing the same flip-flops. Worse yet, I’m forced to eat my own cooking. (Read – opening and heating a can of Spaghettios!) These are laments shared by many of my friends who are spouses. They’ve asked me, “Why isn’t she calling me more often?” or “Why doesn’t he sound more excited about talking to me when he does call?” Truth is, we don’t generate the same amount of dopamine that the new situation does for our husbands and wives.

Dopamine is one of the so-called “love-hormones” released by your body when you fall in love. The euphoria that you feel in the initial stages of a new relationship – that “twitter-pated” feeling - is as addictive as cocaine. This same hormone is released whenever your body encounters a new situation, to varying degrees. It’s what’s happening to your beloved when he or she arrives at the new duty station. It’s not that she doesn’t want to talk to you on the phone, but do know that you are competing with a cocaine-like addiction for a while. (Don’t sweat it, it does wear off.)

Instead of trying to fight this and issuing a siren’s call louder than the new, cool place where your mate is living, why don’t you try generating the hormone within your own body? It can be as easy as changing your surroundings. Ever feel like rearranging the furniture when your lover vacates the premises for longer than a week or two? Your brain is searching for ways to inject your body with dopamine. Why not give in to it? Slap a coat of paint on the walls! (You might want to cover the furniture with drop cloths first.) Once the rush of dopamine starts, you’ll miss your one-true-love less than you’d feared!

I tried this myself once. And in honor of all "go big or go home" attempts, I decided that a pansy neutral like beige or, god-forbid, light eggshell wouldn't be nearly good enough for me. Nope, I took my inspiration from the Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Box. Not the blue of the box, mind you, the orange of the cheesy-goodness that may or may not be from actual cows. (I don't judge, I just eat it and love it!)

The photo above illustrates how much "damn, I'm in love!" hormone can be generated by one gallon of paint. Funny, it kept me from missing my husband nearly as much once the walls were all painted that fan-freakin'-tastic color. The best part is, if you choose to go the super-sonic color route, don't worry about your spouse complaining. After all, he or she is too far away to do anything about it!

Deployment Announcement - How am I supposed to open the %*@>ing pickle jar?

Like many other people connected with the military recently, my husband came home and told me about "deployment opportunities." Choosing to handle this with my normal finesse, I promptly dissolved into tears. Helpful? Not really. Honest? Totally. It's okay, he's used to me and my responses. At least, I hope he is!

Now that we've gotten through two short deployments to Iraq and are two months into a longer deployment, I thought I would try to gather my survival strategies (some more successful than others, but I'll let you be the judge) together in the hopes of assisting other spouses and military members with their separations.

I will try to use the word "spouse" while writing this blog instead of "husband," as one of my girlfriends is the deployed military member and her husband is the one staying behind. Also, as a former military member myself, I feel strongly about supporting the chicks who are still active duty and serving in the reserves. It can be interesting and sort of lonely being one of the few women in a unit, so I hope to share experiences from that point of view, as well.

So, the spouse is leaving for a while. There are some things that you can do to make the transition easier. For me, I had my husband go through the fridge and the pantry and loosen all the bottles and jars. It sounds ridiculous, but the biggest melt-down I ever had was over a jar of pickles. He was on a boat off the coast of Africa for his job (don't ask) and had been gone for 90 days. During that time, I had worked my way through the pickles in the already-open jar and moved on to the new jar from the pantry. The jar was new...and stuck. I tried everything I could think of to get it open. I ran the lid under hot water, I used one of the "grippers" to try to unset the lid, I swore at it, I tapped on it with a knife along the top; nothing worked. I was doubly frustrated since I was a fitness trainer at the time and thought I had left my, "honey, can you open this jar for me?" days behind me. I was wrong. I was pissed. And now, I was living in a pickle-free kitchen.

That was the moment that his absense really made itself known. Who knew that it would be the little things that would highlight the fact that he was wasn't home? That he was elsewhere, (most of the time, I don't really know his location) ostensibly opening pickle jars for his country. After giving into my rage, I remembered something I learned in the military. For every job, just use a hammer! I know, the military doesn't like admitting that either, but it is true more often than we'd like to think. I trooped out to the cement patio, hammer in hand, and smashed the hell out of the pickle jar. (Kids, do not try this at home!) After washing the pickles and picking the glass shards from my fingers, I ate them anyway. I considered those my victory pickles. Again, it's the small things that make a difference.

The moral of the story: When your partner isn't around to assist with the everyday tasks - Get a hammer and apply judiciously, along with a sense of humor. If you can do that, you'll get through the deployment. Because you know your spouse gets a hammer issued upon arrival, it is the military, after all!