Running Army Wife

The unpacking is happening. Also, I accepted a job. Starting January 21st, I will be a Data Programmer/ Analyst for a company located in Tacoma. Slowly and slowly, I'm beginning to see the start of "normal life" falling into place. Note the oddly positioned sleeping puppy. When we put everything into storage a year ago, I put aside one box of keepsakes and treasures to take with me. I knew I wouldn't need these things while I was in Illinois, but I brought them anyway because there's always the chance the storage place could have burned down. And- I feel justified now in this fear because a storage place in the town next to ours did burn down, so it literally could have been ours. This box has our wedding album, letters that James wrote me during various times he's been away, and different things that he has made for me over the years. He's actually a pretty crafty guy, and I love how it balances out with the infantry manliness. Besides the let...

It's taken me a while to getting around to writing this post. James is home . It's weird typing it still. I feel kind of like I got married all over again. Bittersweet goodbyes to family, moving in together, cooking dinner and doing other housewifey things, getting to sleep in a bed with my favorite person.. It all feels new again.  Right now, James is only only going into work a few hours a day to get some redeployment** stuff done, like getting up to date on medical stuff (he hasn't been to the dentist in over a year, etc) and making sure the guys in his platoon are on track too. It's been mostly blissful. I won't deny that there have been a couple difficulties in the transition. When I imagined James coming home, I pictured me sleeping restfully in his arms, no longer worried about his safety. Well, James snores. Something that I seemed to forget about when I was just wishing he was home. So while it's true he's home safe now, I wouldn't call ...

We've moved in, we're drinking lots of coffee, and we even have some plans to meet some fellow runners (/friends?). Well. I say we've moved in, but that only means that technically all our stuff is in the apartment. In boxes. Our address is Olympia but we are in the middle of of a town called Lacey. We actually go through Lacey to get to downtown Olympia. I haven't figured that out yet. Have I told you I love our apartment? We found one through this Army off-base housing program. Basically, the Army has a list of apartments that they have relationships with. It's kind of nice, because it's means that they have looked over the leases, so we know that they don't take advantage of military people. James was told in a housing briefing that sometimes apartments will offer "move-in specials" but if a military person has to break a lease (which he/she can do by federal law if it's because of deployment or change of station), then they can technically ...

Well.. technically Fort Lewis actually. But I couldn't resist the Owl City reference. We are definitely in Seattle area though. After a crazy 4 days of driving and a pretty rough start*, we finally drove into Seattle area on Monday afternoon. And we were welcomed with a pretty hard rainfall. Ah.. Seattle. Way to live up to your reputation. But the rain can't be that bad, because apparently Fort Lewis is the most requested base in the Army. Yeah. That's pretty awesome. I can see why now because the area is beautiful. We are less than a few hours drive from either the city, beach, or mountains. Amazing. So we are now currently apartment hunting.** James is actually right now at a meeting about housing on base, because we haven't ruled that out. If we lived on base though, we wouldn't get James' housing allowance in his paycheck (but our housing would be free). And if we lived off-base we could find a place for less than what his allowance is. But he would have to ...

Next week, I'm leaving this: The beautiful, calm flatness of Illinois, for the more adventurous mountains of Ft Lewis, WA. I took this picture of a bike ride. It's going to definitely be different running and biking in higher altitude with with actual hills. We're moving. Next week. And James is getting deployed in December for a year. Ick. Much sooner that we thought it would be. But I'm glad it's before kids are in the picture. After talking it over with James and some close friends and family, I think I'm going to go ahead and move out to Washington with James, be with him out there for a little less than 3 months, cook him good food, be an awesome homemaker wife, but them move back to live with my family in Illinois for the year once he deploys to Afghanistan. I feel kind of weird moving back in with my family after being married almost 2 years, but they want to be there for me and it gives us that wonderful opportunity to save a lot of money by not paying r...

I have a confession. I was debating not doing my half-marathon this Sunday. Terrible! I know. But with everything going on (hubby graduating ranger school, finding out we are moving a month sooner than expected, finding out about upcoming deployment, TERRIBLE Georgia heat), I convinced myself for a while that it would be okay to ditch it. I even had several friends tell me that it was okay to not do it. And really, it would have been. But I need to do it. Even if I run slower than I did last year, I will hate myself less than if I totally didn't do it. Because I trained for it. I paid $80 for it. And dangit, I want my shirt and finisher's medal. And I'm going to have fun, whether I run a PR or not. (I'll just have more fun if I run the PR) What that means: I need to leave Georiga a day earlier. Leave the sweet slowness of the South and return to busy Chicago to pack. Leave sleeping in, cooking good food, and movie cuddling to return to my lonely empty apartment. My cat ...

Omygoodness. It's official. James has been graduated from Ranger School for about a week now. Feels so nice that it's finally over. His graduation was last Friday. I got here on Thursday and he was supposed to be released for his pass sometime between 2 and 4pm that day.. so I got there at 2:30 and waited until 5. :/ But he was the first guy to get to the gate (since he decided to run- typical James) and it felt so good to hug him! Then went out to dinner with his family and I had to drop him off again that night at the Ranger Battalion. That was kind of annoying. I felt like we were at our little Christian college again before we got married and had to say goodnight at curfew. Soo so proud of him though. He was one of around 60something to graduate in one shot out of close to 400 that started in class 08-11. When we got there that Friday morning, it was actually kind of hard to find him in the crowd. But there he is! The one looking at the camera! Ranger School Graduati...