We Are All Doomed...

Or at least that is how we should feel if you watch the news. My husband was consistently reading about the economic failures of our society and telling me about it. Two weekends ago I finally said "You know what? I don't care." I was sick of hearing him tell me the world is coming to an end, the news telling me we are all doomed to suffer from this country's economic dilemma. I think he got the hint and stopped telling me about it. Then this weekend what is the topic of his family's visit? You guessed it. If you didn't, the economy, and who is heading the doom and gloom conversation? He's mother. She is an expert because she saw it on the news. Personally I think she too gullible to watch so much TV. She even tried telling us all how we are about to start a war with Iran because of our ships in the Persian Gulf. I tried explaining to her there is ALWAYS ships in the Persian Gulf, that a MUE leaves every 6 months and that is where they go. Well she knows what she saw and I am just wrong. HELLO WOMAN, I think I should know they leave every 6 months. Their last stop is Camp Lejeune before heading across the ocean. I have personally been on the beach when they left and came back, and have had phone calls from the beach as they were about to board. They have to pick up their Marines. Of course, no one backs me up. Then she goes back to all our money woes, and I guess someone mentioned a change of subject. (My guess her husband because he gets tired of talking about money just as much as I do.) but she informs us all this is what all families are discussing around the family table. So let her live in her hell, and I went back to laying on the grass with my son thinking you all don't have anything to worry about because you don't have anything anyway. They and the media are waiting for the next Crash and until then are trying to freak the rest of the populous out.

Why don't I care? It will happen if is going to and there is nothing as citizens we can do about it. I would say buy American, but hardily anything is wholly American anymore and if it is it is expensive as hell and who can afford it with the prices of everything else. All we can do is prepare for the worst and hope for the best. (Isn't that a motto somewhere?) So how do you prepare? Buy a few extra cans when you go to the grocery store of vegetables and meats. If you have a way of storing dry goods, do it. Learn the lost art of canning. My husband grew up on a farm without electricity, so why him and his mother are freaking out I have no idea. At least they know how to store food, most of us don't. Plant a garden if you have a yard. If you don't you can still plant them in pots, what better way to decorate then with your own edible foliage? Maybe have a little petty cash stored some where.

Worrying about this doesn't help or fix anything. I'm not saying completely ignore it either, but if you are prepared then you'll be ready for whatever may come.

@rocketmail.com

The first e-mail address I ever had was through Rocketmail. A couple years later Yahoo! took them over, and then a short time after that the addresses where phased out. Today I found that I can now open a new Rocketmail or Ymail account through Yahoo! in what I am guessing is an attempt for people to stop having to be the 1 million sweetie something, now you can be THE sweetie, but only if you act now! I say having to because it seems that a number of the world's population cannot come up with something original for a screen name, but how many originals can you REALLY have before you have to start doubling up? I'm a little ticked off, I have several e-mail accounts from different applications and for several purposes, but the first I ever had was gotten rid of for me. Now they are opening it back up. The name wasn't anything special but at the time it meant something to me, and hey it was my first. I can't remember the first yahoo account I had, but I have been using the same one for 10 years. Now after all that time I have to remember to type in the @yahoo.com...

On a Side Note: I am unable to get my old address back. Someone either already has it or my old address is floating around in there somewhere... now if only I could remember the password...

Remembering the Past

What caught and held my attention today wasn't anything on TV or in the news, although hearing George Carlin had died was a bit sad. No, what has me up at this hour posting instead of returning to bed is something most of us (most likely all of us) are guilty of, which is over analyzing our past. We try to change it in our minds, trying to tell ourselves that the reasons that we had done something were wrong, and if only I had done it this way instead my life would be 10 times better today. We paint ourselves these rosy pictures of would ofs and should ofs and are always better off in the end had we known then what we know now. We pummel ourselves for what now looks like the wrong thing and rarely just let it be what is which is our pasts and as such can do nothing to change it.

Here is an example. At this moment I am trying to figure out how to numb myself from the T5 down and telling myself I knew I should have told that Corpsman¹ the chit² she wrote was bullshit instead of taking it and storming out. At the time I was stationed in 29 Palms, California, in the middle of a desert on the side of a mountain, and upon acceptance of her findings this left in my hand a chit stating I was not to run on sand or hills... I did what all of us probably do in most medical situations and what the doctor says is it or in some cases so shocked you don't know what to say or do for fear of violence. The thing is I knew there was something legitimately wrong with me and the chit she wrote told my Instructor that there wasn't and he proved daily that he thought I was a PoS³ that deserved to be run into the ground. You would hope in your heart of hearts that he would have been more understanding and could just tell there was something wrong but there is a reason for that chit. Personnel fresh from bootcamp and MCT⁴ arrive at MOS⁵ school and decide I have done nothing but run and PT⁶ my ass off (literally in some cases) and I want a break so I'm going to say that my ankle hurts or whatever and get out of PT for a couple of days or weeks. Thus was born the 'this guy is faking' chit, and now I had one. So I was pissed, and we ran back and forth on the same stretch of flat road one time, then oh well you can run this hill, it has pavement, then the mountain runs, which honestly I would have found really fun, except for the fact by the time I got back to my barracks my ankle was purple and the size of one of those small basketballs. Was it the Instructor's fault? Absolutely not. Was it all the Corpsman fault? Honestly I can't say that either. I didn't stand up for myself, and I was the pig headed fool when the chit ran out in a couple of weeks that didn't go back to BAS⁷ and say I was still in pain for fear I would get another bs chit. After a few months of running on one bum ankle and compensating on the other I moved up the hill to a new Instructor. The platoon Sgt told the Instructor there was really something wrong with me and should be forced to go BAS, which I was, and now I had what the bone doctor at the hospital and the therapist accidently tells me are double ankle train wrecks. After a couple years of therapy the left one doesn't get any better, I am sent packing with a medical discharge with other injuries due to ankle instability, and wishing every day of my life I would have told that Corpsman she was wrong and I wouldn't have been so pig headed about getting myself taken care of.

Best case scenario had I told her off, I would still be a Marine loving my job. But what about the other hand?

Here is the point of this blog, we always think things will come out on the rosy side, but what if it hadn't? I could have gotten fixed in school, and by the time I had gotten to my duty station I would have been great and ready to go (instead of being sent back to the shop or to the truck). I would have been sent overseas and I might have come home with worse injuries than pain filled joints or I might not have come back at all.

There is another one we always want to change… our love lives. Oh I wish I wouldn't have dumped him, because my life would be great now. The fact of this analyzing is that we either are single and lonely or perhaps we had a tiff with our current love and think well so and so would have agreed with me. Maybe if I had of done things this way he wouldn't have acted that way. Abused women never remember the pain of being hit, but they remember the ways he apologized, and go back thinking well if he was that sweet he must have meant he wouldn't hit me again. I remember watching a program on photography and one photographer interviewed showed photos she had taken of herself months later after being hit where she was still bruised all over her face. She had to pull out the pictures to remind herself not to go back to him. We have a way of shoving away the pain and remembering the way we felt those first couple of months where when he winked you giggled like a school girl or when he snored all night keeping you awake but it was the cutest thing in the world. We forget the ways they ignored us or lied to us almost every weekend about oh how much they loved and missed us but they were always too busy with something else to spend time with us. The way he never said thank you or notices the things you do for him but you just know he appreciates it. Or how you stayed up all night or weekend thinking he was dead because he said he would call or come over and he was a no show. We always turn everything into our own faults too. Oh if I hadn't lingered those extra few seconds to look at this one item he wouldn't have lost me in the crowd for hours.

Let's face it people, there are reasons we do the things we do. Everything happens for a reason in my opinion. Had my ex not been crazy (literally) I wouldn't have joined the military. If I wouldn't have joined the military I wouldn't have met my ex husband and my daughter wouldn't be here, but also my joints would still be intact. If I wouldn't have been a disabled veteran perhaps my views and opinions wouldn't be what they are today thus I wouldn't have had that much in common with my husband, and we wouldn't have hit it off as well as we did. I would have blown him off and end up waiting for a guy that in the end would have run off to do what he does best which is being single.

There is a reason you gave him up, and you may tell yourself you were just being scared of going to the next step, but if you allow yourself to remember honestly you would know you had a reason to be scared and it wasn't because you have commitment issues, it is because you knew deep down somewhere it would continue the way it was as long as you were with him.

¹Corpsman

An enlisted person in the U.S. Navy or Marines who has been trained to give first aid and basic medical treatment.

²chit

doctor's note

³PoS

piece of sh*t

⁴MCT

Marine Combat Training, which teaches the rest of us none infantry folk the basics because you are always a Marine first and your MOS second.

⁵MOS

military occupational specialty

⁶PT

Physical Training

⁷BAS

Battalion Aid Station, or medical (It’s like a nurse’s office in school on a larger scale.)

Flying Cars

In this day and age everyone thinks we should be living like The Jetsons, with the most important invention not yet created being the flying car. Am I the only one that thinks this is a HORRIBLE idea? I understand the conveniences that an invention like this could provide, direct routes, faster commutes, and less traffic, unless you can recall The Jetsons and their skyways, their traffic was as bad as LA! I would love to have my husband home sooner from work and leaving later in the mornings, but I see many more disadvantages that an invention like this would cause. Are the people that want these inventions actually paying attention to what is going on our roads or are they too busy on their cell phones or perhaps there mind has wander to that grand invention that would take them in to the great blue and away from all the hassles of paying attention to the other "morons" on the pavement? While down on the ground, I am the one dodging the cell phone users and daydreamers thinking to myself 'why, oh why did I bother to leave my house?' I know the question in most of your minds at this moment, and yes, I have used a cell phone while driving. I only use it if I have to i.e. I am running late for an appointment because someone in front of me was sending a text message while behind the wheel and has crashed into the elderly woman and now the texter is trying to blame the crash on her feeble old mind and not his utter lack of paying attention to anything beside that little vibrating communication device. Maybe the vibrations in his lap are why he wants the phone continually going off, but I digress. If an invention like this actually took off I wouldn't even be safe in my home anymore. I am sure there would be "skyways", but as of late there is at least once a month someone crossing the center divider and plowing into someone minding their lanes and/or telephone conversations. We also can't forget the 20 year old drunk in a Jetta that kills a semi driver because the courts didn't put her in jail for her first couple of offenses nor any of her little bar buddies and pothead friends. Maybe we can look forward to the flybys of teenage boys that no longer need to get their thrills by plowing through a corn field during the middle of the night but instead now are seeing how many people they can wake up before the cops catch up to them. Or maybe my house will be the next finish line for the Need for Speed crowd, which I am sure my ex would enjoy thoroughly. Then you have the insane exes and other folks that do not quite have all their marbles but yet still have their licenses. Small town Indiana isn't even safe from things that a deranged mind can do with a flying projectile, case in point this Plane Crash where an 8 year old little girl was killed by her own father in his attempt to get back at his ex and her family. People don't even need cars or licenses to wreak havoc on unsuspecting citizens, for example the teenagers on an overpass dropping rocks on passing cars. Yes, why not put those same teens stories above the ground and see what kind of damage that same rock will do. Or maybe the job of the crazy that goes to school and shoots up the place could be made just that much easier by just taking their flying car mach 1 straight into the building instead of walking up and down hallways. You may think those are just random instances that would not be normal everyday life, but even if these things do not effect you every day the fact is everyday someone tries to commit suicide, murder or some sort of crime, and this would make things a lot easier. Here is one that probably effects everyone everyday that they drive. The five people that run the light after it has turned red (Shelbyville Rd and New Lagrange Rd, Louisville) while the guy behind you is honking his horn because the light has turned green and one second has passed. The impatience and road rage would not end just because we are now floating in the heavens. More accidents would be tragedies. I for one am not looking forward to the day the mass of this or any other nation take to the skies above me or my family for their daily transportation.