Chaotically Organized

For some reason I have noticed that my life just seems to run smoother the more chaotic it gets. A year and a half ago when I was a member of the PWOC board, FRG leader, college student, and stay-at-home mommy with four year old twins at home, I was able to get a lot accomplished during the day, even with the kids in tow every step of the way.

Don’t get me wrong, when my kids started kindergarten I found a lot more time on my hands and found ways to fill up that time, mostly by taking a little “me” time and getting into a gym routine, and working toward my bachelor’s degree. I even found time to train for the Army Ten-Miler (which I didn’t have the opportunity to do after all because my hubby came home from his deployment!!).

When I gave up the FRG leader position and my term on the PWOC board expired, I found that my time-management skills were not up to par at all. I would always get my school work done, but the house suffered even though I had no real reason to neglect my chores.

Then the day that I had been working toward for three years finally came…I graduated from college! I was ecstatic beyond belief. I had a BREAK from school (which I never allowed myself to have, with the exception of the move to Germany), what was I going to do with all my time between graduation and when I start graduate school? You know what I did? A whole lot of nothing. I went to the gym and took care of the needs of my children and husband, but the housework was neglected. My time management skills went to the wayside and the things that I could normally accomplish in a day would take me an entire week…why is that?

Now I am in grad school (which has an insane amount of homework), I work out every day, I take care of my family’s needs, and I facilitate a class for PWOC. I also recently committed myself to doing a half-marathon in May with some other ladies from PWOC. With all of that going on in my life, guess what? I have been on top of my household chores as well!

I don’t understand it, but I seem to work better off of chaos than I do when things are calm. I like to think of my life as being chaotically organized…and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Home is Where You Hang Your Hat

Being associated with the military and having to move around so often, “home” has many different concepts. Home can mean where you grew up, where your last duty station is, or your house at your current duty station. The meaning of “home” can change context from person to person, or from conversation to conversation depending on the person.

For Christmas I was afforded the opportunity to go “home” to Wisconsin, which is where I grew up and where my parents and brother live. Although I have not lived in Wisconsin for over ten years, in my heart Wisconsin will always be where “home” is for me. I may not live there again anytime soon, but my husband and I would like to retire there when his military enlistment is up.

When we returned from our trip “home”, I was truly disgusted by the appearance of my physical home, Warner Barracks. There was garbage all over post, beer bottles in the high school lawn, and around my building there were hundreds of cigarette butts, peanut oil dumped on the grass from frying turkeys over the holidays, an assortment of destroyed lawn toys, a shopping cart, and other forms of debris. I had a hard enough time leaving Wisconsin, and coming back home with the common areas in this condition made it almost unbearable for me to be here.

You see, to many people living here in Germany is only a temporary thing. Truth be told, it really is a temporary assignment. If you are married you will be here for a minimum of three years unless you choose to extend. Even if you do choose to extend, eventually you will have to move back to the states unless you choose to retire in Germany and even then you will have to move off post. Since many view living here as temporary, they do not view this assignment as their home and do not treat it as such. They do not pick up after themselves, leave the common areas in disarray, and do not extend kindness or courtesy to their neighbors. I do believe in the old saying that “home is where your heart is”, but for the time being this is where we are living. God put us here and for the duration of our stay here this is our home and it should be treated as such. It is no t difficult to pick up after ourselves, our children, our pets. If for some reason one of our neighbors forgets to throw something away, it is not difficult to help them out that one time. It is not difficult to be kind to our neighbors or even make friends with them, no matter where they are from or their race/culture/ethnicity. If we all work together and extend just a little bit of common courtesy to one another then this place can truly become a home.

Even though to me “home” will always be Wisconsin and that is where my heart is, in reality home is where I hang my hat. Right now, my hat hangs in Bamberg, Germany. I will pick up after myself and my family, I will do my part to ensure that the common areas are clean (without having to bear the brunt of the weight and be a maid to my neighbors). I will extend kindness and courtesy to my neighbors because I want my home to become a place that I want to be, not just some place I am passing through on the road of life on my way to somewhere else.

If only my neighbors will adopt the same train of thought.                                   

What I'm Thankful For

There are so many things that I'm thankful for, where do I even start? I'm thankful that my Lord and Saviour died on the cross so that I may have eternal life. I'm thankful that I live in a country where I have the freedom to worship to practice my religion openly.

I am thankful that God gave me such a wonderful husband. Even though no man is perfect, he is everything I could have ever asked for. I am also thankful that my husband is home from Afghanistan and is able to celebrate the holidays with us this year.

I am so very thankful for my little boy and little girl...a lot of the time I don't think I deserve to have such sweet, happy, smart little kids but I am so grateful that God put them in my care.

I am thankful for my mother, father, and brother. I could not have chosen better family members if I had the chance. My parents and brother are so loving and supportive, I do not know where I would be without them.

I am thankful for my very large extended family. I know that I don't keep in touch as often as I should (especially if you're not on facebook) but I want to know that I love and miss each and every single one of you. The love and support that I have recieved from all of you throughout the years is very much appreciated.

I am thankful for my Bamberg/Army family and the support that they gave me during this past deployment. Sometimes it can be difficult being so far away from my immediate family, but the love and support that I get from my family here makes up for the fact that my family is not here to help me when I need them. I am forever grateful to each one of my friends and the support I have recieved from them, even if it was something as simple as kind words in a facebook message.

I am thankful for my furry child, Maddie. She was such a horrible puppy but she is really turning into such a great dog. She looks mean but she couldn't hurt a fly if she wanted to, and she's so stubborn but at the same time she is very sweet, affectionate, and loyal.

I am thankful for the fact that I get to live in Germany for the third time in my life! I love living in Europe and the travel opportunities that we have because we live here. We have gone on so many trips, and are planning on so many more.

I am thankful that, as of today, I am officially a college graduate. I am thankful to have such a loving and supportive husband when it comes to my education. I am also thankful that I will be starting graduate school soon and that God seems to be providing a means for me to pay for school as well.

I am thankful that I finally started my journey to a healthy lifestyle and lost 40lbs this past year. I feel so much better and have much more energy than I used to, and I like being able to do activities like the Running of the Herd or 10-milers.

I am thankful that my husband has a job, that we have medical insurance, and that we have a place to live and we really don't have to worry about anything financially. We might not have much compared to many other people, but we have so much more than so many others and I am grateful that our basic needs (and then some) are taken care of.

I am thankful that my family and I are healthy. Aside from the occasional stomach virus or cold, we are all very healthy and for that I am very grateful.

I am thankful for the fact that I get to be a stay-at-home mother and that I don't have to work if I don't want to. I never thought I'd be a housewife, and to be honest I didn't enjoy it very much during the first few years, but it has grown on me. I love being able to do volunteer work if I want to, keep a clean house, bring my husband food at work if he needs it, have dinner on the table when he comes home, take care of my children, help them with their homework, teach them the morals and values that I want them to learn, and just enjoy taking care of and being with my family. So many women want to be able to do this and can't because of financial situations, and I just kind of "fell" into this position, but I am glad that I did.

There are probably so many things that I'm missing, but even though I can't think of them right now I'm still thankful for them. What are you thankful for?

AFN News Clip

Here is the AFN News clip of this years Running of the Herd:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQumeA6cB7Q

Family, Friend, or Foe?

I come from a very large, close family. Ok so my immediate family is rather small and only consists of my mom, dad, brother, and myself; but my extended family is huge. On my dad’s side I have 5 aunts, 4 uncles, their spouses, and over 30 cousins and now my cousins are having children. We all care for each other, celebrate with each other, help each other through the hard times, and stand up for each other. Sure there are the occasional disagreements, but often times these disagreements are worked out and life goes on as normal. We get together as often as possible for the major holidays and even find time to get together “just because”. The childhood memories that I have of these times with my family fill me with joy, and provide a basis for how I would like to raise my children. Family is everything.

When I married my husband I was ecstatic because that meant that I would have even more family to share everything with; I was gaining a mother in-law, a father in-law, two brothers in-law and their wives, a niece, two nephews, and two step-children. To make things even better I get along with my husband’s ex-wife. That’s not to say we don’t argue, but we get along pretty good and work through our disagreements. Somehow I had this notion that being a part of this new family would be a lot like being a part of the family I grew up in, just a little different because they are obviously different people with different family traditions. I could not have been more wrong.

Don’t get me wrong, I have a pretty good relationship with my brothers in-law (I have yet to meet one of my sisters in-law, but I seem to have a good e-mail relationship with her and unfortunately one of my brother’s in-law is currently going through a divorce and I have pretty much written his wife out of the equation) and my step-children and I love them dearly. For some reason, though, my step-mother has never truly liked me. I’m not going to go into details of the events that have taken place over the years, there’s honestly too much to write and I really don’t want to get into all of that. I just don’t understand why she doesn’t like me. I have never done anything malicious toward her or had any ill-will or intent toward her. I will be honest and say that in regards to my husband’s ex-wife I have often acted in a childish manner and would understand why she would not like to continue a relationship with me (which, thankfully, is not the case), but as far as my mother in-law is concerned this is not the case. She has time and time again told my husband to divorce me, told me that I was not good enough for her son, and blows things out of proportion or twists things to try and make me look bad. I would understand all of this much better if I cheated on my husband, was a bad mother, spent all of my husband’s money and put us in debt, was ill-tempered, etc., but I’m not any of those things so I really do not understand the constant character assassinations, many of which are becoming public (isn’t facebook wonderful?). Now, not only is my mother in-law assassinating my character but other family members are writing my husband and doing the same. My mother in-law’s sister (who I met once, 6 years ago for only a few hours during Thanksgiving) wrote my husband and called me trailer trash. I know I shouldn’t take these things to heart, but when so many people are trying to bring you down and call you names and such it starts to wear on you.

I have not responded to any of the recent character assassinations. Honestly, anything I write my mother in-law will be misconstrued into something horrible, even if it’s nice, so I really do not see the point. Not to mention, right now I don’t have anything nice to say at all and if I write her a nasty-gram that really doesn’t make me any better than her. So I stick with the old saying “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all”.

It’s not that I have not tried to have a relationship with my mother in-law. There have been several times where I have written her and stated that we should talk and work on our issues and attempt to build a stronger relationship. The last time I tried to do that, which was about a year and a half ago, she informed me that she did not have time for it and that she has to focus on her health. I’m not going to post her medical history on the internet, but the health problem she was referring to is relatively minor and not a serious disease, and she would have been more than capable of talking with me and attempt to work things out if she had been inclined to do so.

I recently wrote a dear friend of mine asking her to pray for my husband’s family and all of the family drama and troubles that we all have been going through. In her reply I realized that where I might not have been given the ideal mother in-law, God did bless me with a wonderful “family” here in Bamberg. This woman wrote back and said she would pray for us, agreed to do another favor I asked of her, and offered to take my kids for a weekend so my husband and I can have some alone time. How awesome is that? In that moment I realized that family is blood and should be everything, but some family can be foe at the same time, and that some friends can be just as good (if not better) than family.

With all that being said, I’m going to do my best to not let all of this stuff bring me down. I KNOW I am a good person, a good wife, mother, daughter, sister, and friend. I AM worth getting to know and have a relationship with, and if ANYBODY fails to see or realize this then it is their loss.

My “Herd” Experience

I apologize to any of my readers who might have been eagerly anticipating my race-day experience. I don’t have any good excuses for not writing other than pure laziness. Since my husband has been home I have not gotten anything accomplished.

On November 8^th my husband and I went down to the BSB battalion area where the race was being held. Right off the bat I was put in a bad mood because I found out that instead of registering me for the race, the “team captain” had me running with my husband. To clarify, instead of listing me as a contestant on my own standing, she listed us as “Daniel Coddington & Wife”, to run as a single contestant. I was upset, to say the least, because I had been looking forward to this for a while. The “captain” (more on her later) was not there so my husband talked to a few people and got me on the team as an actual contestant.

Side note about the “team captain”. She runs the S-3, or is going to, and she decided that she wanted to start an S-3 team for the race to build camaraderie among the members of the shop, which really is a good idea. The thing is, she signed herself up for the race, then on the day of the race she backed out saying that she had an MRI scheduled sometime in the near future for her knee and could not run. Ok, fine. Later I found out that she had the knee problems before she even deployed, so why on earth would you sign up for a race that you had absolutely no intention of running? It just didn’t make sense to me. Everything worked out in the end, and to give credit to this person she was a great cheerleader and made sure that all of the runners had everything that they needed. Her actions just didn’t make sense to me.

Ok. So I am finally “for real” signed up for the race and I meet all of the team members who all seem really nice. Dan and I set up our camping area, we had a tent, a fire pit, lawn chairs, and tons of goodies, even though it was cold we fully intended on staying the night there.

Did I mention it was cold? I mean, not just cold, but FREEZING. I am so thankful that we brought the fire pit along with us, and that we all brought more than enough clothes to keep us warm. We were considering taking the kids home and being home in shifts so that they could be warm, but they were perfectly content in their sleeping bags and wanted to go “camping”. So, we toughed it out.

Back to the race, things seemed to be going really well. I did my fist 5-mile lap around 6pm, in the dark. I honestly wouldn’t recommend that to anybody who has a choice in the matter because you can’t really see where you’re going, but it was really well lit with chem.-lights and there was no possible way I could have gotten lost (I think if I ran it during the daytime first I would have gotten lost…it doesn’t take much for me). I was going good. I mean, the rough terrain of the trail didn’t seem to bother me, I even passed one lady, I was feeling good, and the songs that were playing on my iPod rocked. I finished my first lap in about 50 minutes, which is a personal best for me. I honestly could have run another lap right away and been okay with it.

So I turn the final corner and can see the finish line. I have no idea what the guy who I was supposed to give the bayonet to looked like. Just a little side bar, instead of running the relay with a baton, we ran it with a bayonet. Those things are HEAVY to run with, my arms got tired and I had to keep on switching it from hand to hand to avoid muscle failure. Anywho, so I don’t know what the guy looked like because he wasn’t around during the introductions. I didn’t see anybody looking like they were ready to take the baton from me, and I get to the finish line and there was still nobody there. Now, I know this isn’t very Christian of me by any means but I’m going to be honest and say that I screamed “where the f*ck is my team?”” I just couldn’t believe that a team member would let me down like that, even thought I was feeling good and could have run another lap right then. The guy had no idea what I looked like either, and when he realized that it was me who he was supposed to replace I heard him sprinting from behind me, I held out the bayonet and he took it from me.

When I got back to our camping area I was told that one of our team members got so drunk playing beer pong that he was going to be useless. Other team members kept on talking about waking him up in a few hours, but I heard that he was passed out and that his wife had him rolled on his side so that he wouldn’t choke on his own vomit. I knew the kids wasn’t going to be of any use to us for at least the rest of the night, but for some reason the others just wouldn’t leave him alone.

I have to say that I was disappointed with the rest of the race. I “ran” my second lap at about 2am, but before that I was talking to some of the other team mates who already had bad attitudes and were talking about quitting. I wanted to run my second lap but the other team mates convinced me to walk it so that it would take up more time. Most everyone else from the other teams were walking by this point so it wasn’t like it was out of the ordinary to be asked this, but if I wanted to run it they should have let me run it. So I walk my second lap, get back, and find that one soldier was arrested for a DUI and another from the battalion was accused of kidnapping his daughter, so the atmosphere  for the rest of the night was shot. One of our team members was too drunk to run, another was upset because she ended up having to run two laps in a row because another team member failed to be at the finish line to relieve her, and another missed his wife or something and went home, but not before he tried to convince the rest of the team to quit to. I have to admit that I was a bit put off by all this. We are supposed to be running this race to honor the 173^rd soldiers who sacrificed all in combat, and the battalion had just lost 4 soldiers not even three months ago. These people knew what they were signing up for, why on earth (barring illness or injury) would they even think about quitting? There was one point where my husband and I were prepared to finish the race ourselves if need be, just taking turns running the final laps. There was no way we were going to quit.

So just before my third and last lap our team captain approached me and told me that I didn’t need to run the last lap, that our team had done enough and that I should stay back and hang out with my family since “that is what this is all about”. Um, NO, it’s really all about honoring fallen soldiers, and there was no way I was going to quit just before my last lap. So I ran/walked my last lap and came in when the race tracker said 23:50, I couldn’t have timed it any better if I had tried.

For my husband, kids, and I the race was a great thing. We got to go “camping” and bond as a family, and Dan and I bonded over running the even together. I got to meet a few of the people my husband would be working with so it was nice to get to know them. I was disappointed with the attitude of some of my team mates, but next year (if we’re still here) we will be a bit more selective as to who we run with. All in all it was a great experience and one that I would do all over again if I had to.

The Running of the Herd

Once a year there is a 24-hour relay race held on the 8^th of November called the Running of the Herd. The race is grueling; a team is composed of seven runners, and each lap is approximately 5 miles, and one runner must be running at all times during the race. The average runner will run about 20 miles during the course of the event, with some running as many as 30 to 35 miles.

The people who compete in this race are not professional athletes and have little or no training before the race. Most of them are soldiers, but some spouses and civilians run too. So why on earth would they put their bodies through such a physically demanding task?

The Running of the Herd started on November 8^th of 2007 to commemorate the loss of soldiers in Vietnam during a grueling battle on the 8^th of November (Big and Rich wrote a song about it, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfElHIt7n0s

to see the video), the loss of ten 173^rd Sky Soldiers during a deployment to Afghanistan in 2008, and more recently the loss of more Sky Soldiers in October of 2010. Needless to say, the men and women who compete in the Running of the Herd do so to honor the lives of those who gave all for our country.

I have been to the 2^nd and 3^rd annual races of the Running of the Herd as a spectator. The races tended to be small with only a handful of teams, but the atmosphere is one of both remembrance and celebration. There are about 30 teams registered so far this year, which makes it the biggest event yet. This year, for the 4^th annual Running of the Herd I will be attending as a competitor. I do not by any means plan on breaking any records or even being on a team that has a shot at winning. I am doing this race for two reasons; to honor those who gave all for our country, and to challenge myself. I am not by any means a professional athlete…I hardly consider myself an athlete, but I am in the best shape of my life right now and I have been running a lot lately. I’m looking forward to this experience, but at the same time I know that my body is going to hate me for it afterward. Even so, that is a small price to pay compared to those who gave the ultimate sacrifice.

I will be sure to post pictures after the race and write about my experience…wish me luck!