The Diaries of a Fruitcake in a Half Baked World!

It’s the countdown to my husbands retirement. October 23rd he had his retirement ceremony, which was awesome having both sides of the family there. He will be going on 24 years of service with the U.S. Army and his time has come to an end.  I am blessed that he has made it through all his deployments!  We celebrated our 20th anniversary, three days before his retirement and I have learned so much and grown so much as a military spouse.

When we married back in 1989, I was a dependent of a military Officer. I have always moved every 3 years and loved to always try a new area. Marrying into the military was absolutely what I wanted.  To keep traveling and meeting new people and setting up home where ever the Army sent us.  It was somewhat of a challenge going from being the dependent child to the spouse.

I was 18 years old when I married my husband. He was an Private stationed at Ft. Rucker, AL.  We were there during the Gulf War but he never had to deploy due to his job and where he was at.  The time did come for him to have a one year hardship tour.  Honduras.  We found out 1 month before he left that I was pregnant with our first child. He missed the pregnancy but was home for her birth, only to leave 3 weeks later to return. He didn’t come home until she was 6 months old.  So, I was 21 years old and raising our first child together, alone. I had to grow up quickly.  At 22 years of age, we had our second child in San Antonio, TX. Then at 23 years of age, we had our third child in Ft. Hood, TX.  When our last one was 2 months old, I found myself alone with 2 toddlers and an infant, 3 car seats, 5 pieces of luggage, 2 dogs and 2 crates on a plane to Germany to meet my husband for our 3 year tour.  Talk about being alone!  This time in my life was the time that I came across women who wore their husbands rank and looked down at me.  This is the time when I learned that we had to overlook those things and get along because we were all that we had when it came for help and staying sane. Our husbands were gone to field duty exercises and Bosnia.

When he came home we were on our way out of Germany to Ft. Rucker, AL for a couple of years and then to Ft. Campbell, KY where we are now and retiring.

During my time as a Military Spouse, I have enjoyed all the travels.  I’ve been to France, Switzerland, Poland, Italy, Germany, Alabama, Texas, Kentucky and he has been to Bosnia, Honduras, Iraq, Qatar, Afghanistan and so much more.  One thing I never got was a shrunk or coo coo clock or grandfather clock.  I did get my pottery and crystal though.  I made a lot of friends and one, Angela, that I met in Germany, followed us from Germany to Ft. Rucker to live one street over from us for a couple of years and then to Ft. Campbell.  I’ve watched her kids grow and join the military and she has watched mine grow.  Her husband is retiring next year too!  This world is really a small world.

Some things I won’t miss are the deployments, the TDY trips and field training exercises. The rumors that sometimes turned out to be true from those trips. Being a military spouse is really a hard job. You find yourself alone a lot and having to take care of everything. Then he comes home and takes back those responsibilities, which kind of upset the flow of things. It is very hard to have to take control and then give it back.  Many spouses find it hard to cope with deployments but my hands were always full with our children.  My friends and I would plan on the meals for thanksgiving, Christmas, easter, etc…  It was hard but at least we had each other.

So now the choices of retirement.  I have no idea what it is going to be like as a “civilian”. He got his job in the civilian world the day of his retirement ceremony and he will be with the guys at his current unit, which is wonderful for him! Today was a day of figuring out insurance, dental, medical, making those decisions and fedEx’ing them back to the company. His hair is longer than I have ever seen in since I met him in 1987. He has a beard! I will have to post a picture of the werewolf!

If you are already retired from the Military, send me some advice, if you have any. I would love to read it, learn from it.

Yes, I say “Our” because their spouses are doing something for us.

It is a very hard life and can be so rough on a marriage when the spouse is gone for over a year and then comes home to find out in the next few months when he or she will be going back for another tour.  I have seen the hardship first hand and I was speaking with a friend tonight who had it placed on her heart to try and help the families, to let them know she is here for them.

Do these families need encouragement and an ear for someone to listen? I believe they do.  But where are they going to go to get it? Will it be online or would it be at church or out with the girls or guys?  I know when my husband was deployed, we lived on base and the women came together with a Bible study group named P.W.O.C. Protestant Women of the Chapel.  I would help babysit when the Catholics had their C.W.O.C.  It was a place to come together and pray and learn and allow the Father to listen and heal their hearts and grow in the Word.  The Lord is our strength.  I was involved for three years while he was gone on and off. It was like a sisterhood.  A place of refuge.  Would a bible study be the place you would go or maybe a coffee once a week?

Do you know a place where our families who have spouses on hardship tours can go to get encouragement? If so, please let me know… others are reading who might not want to write in and by those who do, they see something familiar and will go. Whether it is online or in our community, please don’t be silent about what you know.

As I lay my head on the pillow tonight, I will be praying for the marriages of our Military and the children without their parent.

Blessings to all.

Well, I will be the first one to share a casual story. My husband has been in the military for over 23 years. He is retiring in January 2010. So excited!! Last year when he was going to retire, it wasn’t as exciting because we didn’t know what to expect or if he needed to get another job. Some things happened with the soldier who was to take his slot and he decided to stay in for another year until the unit got another soldier to fill his position. It was a relief for us when he decided to pull his papers and they approved it. The reason was it gave him more time to decide what he wanted to do with his career.
We are so happy that we did this. It gave us more time to settle into the fact that we were retiring from the military. He was able to find another job and it is going to be a smooth transition. He has been on leave since October 23rd and his new job starts on January 4th. It is a great way for him to end his career with the military. Taking it easy, growing a beard. I am proud of him.
Now it’s time for cilivian life….

Joyce Dodson, Sarah Payeur, Michel Gordon, Chad Kneller, Alexis Labarette, Thea Agnew, Denise Patterson, Tyrone Basnight, (Sitting) Don Williamson, Jamie Jarman, Andrea Griffith, Lisa Pratt (Winner), Sam Tang

Where do I begin? I love this group.  We were together for two weeks and we bonded more than we thought possible. All of us are on facebook and keep in touch with the other.

When we came together that first day, we were feeling each other out to see who the competition was. It wasn’t long before we realized that we were all competition!  There wasn’t one bad singer in the group.  We all harmonized well with the other and it was just bodies full of talent in every practice. read More >

Yesterday we started off around 10:45 but our van didn’t come until 11:30. So we had some time in the lobby area of the hotel to visit and talk about our performances with each other. We can honestly say that whoever wins, we will not be saying, “How did he/she win this?” Whoever wins we will understand and be thrilled for them.

We went to eat first and I went to the grocery store to get some medicine to get over this sinus drainage cold thing I got going on. I just don’t understand why I come all this way and I get a cold the day before I am to sing! Why? Why? Why? I am still going to stand up and do my very best and your votes will pull me through, if the judges are pulling too. I can still sing but it might sound a little nasally. I will sound more like Willie Nelson..:) NOT!! Just watch to see what a cold does and then comment!

We got to the COLD theatre around 1 pm and started rehearsing with the whole show. Group 1 singing “Party in the USA” and then the first contestant singing, etc… Then group 2 (my group) getting up and singing and doing our solo parts. After 4 hours of doing that, we then went to eat at where?…… VINNY’S and then we went back to the theatre and practice the whole thing on stage. Went over it a couple of times and one of the men who help cast for America’s Got Talent and our Contest was sitting in the judges seats and watching. He gave us all good advice.

After that was done we all did some relaxing exercises with Joey, our Vocal Coach, and then came back to the hotel. It was around 9:30 pm when I put my head on the pillow. I woke up at 3 a.m. and then fell back to sleep, had some nightmares and now I am up at 7 a.m. filling my nose with Afrin and Salin sprays, trying to clear this out.

Anyway, y’all have a great day and be praying for my voice and performance. I want to bring this song across to everyone sitting in listening ear shot. I hope you enjoy the performance and vote for me!

Voting begins tomorrow, Sunday, at 8:30 pm-11:30 pm Central for 2 hours. The broadcast can be seen at 7 pm central on the pentagon website: http://www.pentagonchannel.mil clicking on steaming live or if you see Operation Rising Star, click there. Voting is done on http://www.oprisingstar.com clicking on VOTE then picking me.

Thank you again!

Yesterday was back to the normal schedule.  We ate the hotels breakfast and headed back to the theatre.  It was another cold, rainy day.  I am sure it didn’t help with what I have now.  A couple of contestants had a fever and some drainage. It went away after two days.  read More >

I woke up to hearing the rain outside and it was cold! What a change in the temperature. We were able to sleep in a little longer because of the day before, which was nice. I did some warm ups in my room and of course was keeping you up to date with how day 2 went.

Yesterday we started off going straight to rehearsals and singing from 9-11:30.  We went over our group songs, even did a little contest on which group of 6 contestants sold the show for one of the songs we are doing, “Party in the U.S.A.”  read More >

First of all, from this day out I will refer to Operation Rising Star as ORS. Breaking it down a little. Whew! What a day. It was suppose to rain but it held off and the sun shined through. We started our day going through some vocal group warm ups, learning different technics. read More >

It turned out to be a beautiful morning yesterday when we all left the hotel for Ft. Belvoir’s Wallace Theatre at 8:45. This is the home of the Army’s Soldier Show. We weren’t suppose to leave until 8:50, so while we were almost a couple of minutes away, someone counted heads and realized we were missing someone. read More >