disjointed

My mind is all over the place lately, homecoming is imminent, vacation planning, and now a snow day for school so I'm not getting done things that I NEED to get done!  Right now, however, I'm thinking of what someone said to me yesterday - they said that having a spouse deployed sounded so romantic!  Of course, I used to think this way too, before I was living the life, LOL!  I admit that when I heard that it did give me pause and was really nice to know that it at least appears that way to others when sometimes I feel like I am just constantly fixing things with duct tape and barely holding it all together!

Here's the real deal:  I'm just like everyone else!  Some would think that we write long emails to each other full of love and devotion, but really we use these forms of communication to talk to each other just as if we were conversing in person.  Here's a perfect example of a few that have occurred over the last week:

(from me):

"Hey do you have any of the OEM Subaru Super coolant left?  Not the little bottle of conditioner, I'm talking about the big gallon jug with blue Subaru label?  It's super expensive and I don't want to have to buy more.  I think we need to just top it off.

Here's the deal

on the Subaru forum lots of people say that the level should read "L" when the engine is cold  (ours does)

in the manual, it states to fill to the "H" when engine is cold and make sure radiator resevoir is full.... which is correct?  I'm kind of leaning to the owner/mech forum because say it was summer and you topped off both the resevoir AND the tank to "H" when the engine was cold... and then what happens when the engine is hot?  My take would be an overflow or gasket/cap failure.... BUT IM NOT A MECHANIC, I'm just a wife LOL...

So what do I do?  Our coolant reads even with the "L" mark"

That was copied as is, not even a signature on my part, LOL, romantic, huh?

Here's another when I had a frozen pipe burst yesterday morning:

(from me):

"I don't know but it flooded the area by the playset again, I'm freaking out now since I don't know whether to run a slow drip all night and keep the lines open, or will all that water running endanger the well pump?  Or will runnng the well pump all night like that keep it from freezing?  it's about 19 here now so I've got a few degrees before I worry, omg I'm sick of this already!  I love winter, but our house is NOT built for this!  Frigging pipes in a CRAWLSPACE???!!!!!"

I think the subject line on that one was "help" LOL.... even got the below photo of that particular event:

the yard will be open for night skate courtesy of a burst pipe!

Here's a standard one liner from him, this is usually the most I can coax out of him:

Wow that snow up north looks pretty… Pretty Treacherous. It's going to take forever to get up there. All I'm saying is their better be some cheese curds in it for me.
Love, Hubby

Cheese curd talk...more romance, although don't you just love that he signs it "hubby"?  LOL

Among other events this week were the tenants calling to say their p-trap under the sink had been leaking "awhile"... I'll say - the NEW cabinets are all warped!  I replaced that assembly and it appears to be all systems go again.  Also got the news that they are transferring to another Army base the end of January so I'll be responsible for two mortgages until we can get it re-rented.  There's never a good time of year for this.

So see?  I'm just like "regular folk", and as a matter of fact now that I look at this, I'm considerably less romantic than others LOL.  That will change on homecoming day though, I don't care how long you've been a military wife, homecoming never gets old - it is the most emotional event you could possibly have aside from the birth of a child.  It takes me by surprise each and every time, and I'm known for having a cynical and somewhat sarcastic personality and it affects me still!

Ok, so that was a "peek" into how things run on a normal basis, see why I don't like to write about it much?  Home destruction is my "white elephant" that it is better sometimes to move on quickly from one disaster to the next without dwelling on them... now it's on to some other things from the past week!

This was too awesome not to share... the winter gear section of our local Old Navy store, can you tell winter has hit Virginia Beach?!  The poor store personnel couldn't keep up.

Every year I forget to budget for this... probably because when I was a kid I only had ONE teacher!  These are for the kids' teachers and bus driver, and a gift exchange the kindergarten class is doing.  Teachers do a great job, but if they only had ONE each their present would be nicer hahaha!

Below, Finn with his favorite girl!  She has been Finn's "special friend" since preschool, but she is just outside the age window so she didn't move on to kindergarten with him so they don't get to see each other much.  Her birthday party was last month on the day Finn got so sick, so he couldn't go.  He finally got to bring her the birthday gift the other night!  Now I have to break some bad news to him, her family is being transferred to Japan, and he will not be happy about this at all!

In other news, I am still knitting and getting things "ready" in general - kids & I got our haircut, I detailed the dogs, we're getting close to the big day!  It just started snowing 5 minutes ago, so I hope we get enough that I can get the kids outside to play in it, school called a "snow day" today and they are driving me batty!  Now I know how my mom probably felt!