FML

In my opinion, today’s most overused term is “FML”. Everybody says it, at least here on post. I hear it just about everywhere, and I often see someone post it on facebook when something is not going the way that a person planned it to. For those of you who don’t know, “FML” stands for Fuck My Life.

In the spirit of full disclosure I must admit that I have used the term one time. I don’t remember what was going on, but things just weren’t going my way and I used it. It seemed unnatural, and even though things weren’t going my way I felt that I had no real reason to use it. Why? Well, because I actually have a very good life and I do not have much to complain about, so when one little thing doesn’t go my way I’m going to say something like that? Kind of seems silly really.

Even for those who are not presently living their ideal life, I think the term is still a waste of breath. I say this because no matter how bad things get, things can go worse. With that being said, things can always get better too. Instead of focusing on the negative things, people should turn their attention to the things the positive things in their life.

Yeah, there will be bumps in the road, but how are we supposed to grow and mature without the tough experiences most of us will face at one time or another? I know things can suck, but every time that things have been really crappy in my life or I was not in an ideal situation I just hang in there, bear through it, and work toward my goals…even if that goal is something little like making it through the day. My point is, we shouldn’t just throw our hands up and say “FML” whenever things get rough, we should work through those time because it is the tough times that make us who we are today.

I am reminded of a quote by Henry Ford, “When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” In the end, it is adversity that makes us stronger. Be thankful that you have the chance to be changed for the better through these tough experiences.

Reasons Why Blocking the Bill is so Important!

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.