Dear Darla Diaries

blow it up

I just posted a FREE FURNITURE ad on Craigslist to give away an old table/chair set and recliner. I thought it was a brilliant idea to post our NEW home number with the effective date of tomorrow for the availability. Part of the reasoning was that the home number isn't full effective until tomorrow. (The other reason being I didn't want to dish out my personnel cell.) Slight problem I didn't forsee ... just because Com.c.ast isn't showing up until tomorrow doesn't mean the CALLER ID DOESN'T WORK.

I had forgotten about that discovery from last night. In fact yesterday it was quite hilarious, just now not so much. Yesterday I was watching Medium when Call FROM VA 123-456-7890 blinked across the screen. I started panicking because it looked like the line MrD uses when calling from the desert. Hilarious is when you find yourself running around frantically looking for a phone ... that wasn't ringing ... OR SET UP YET.

Back to five minutes.

No sooner did I hit save on the Craigslist ad than the Caller ID starts overlapping itself with calls. YA me for not giving out my cell number at 9:35p and hurrah for getting rid of furniture that's just clogging up my home but oops for all those people that can't read a Craigslist ad. Keep on blowing it up!

go.see.angel

My buddy Angel is doing a sweet competition for FREE PARENTING STUFF over at  her blog. I will now shamelessly share her good news:

I am now going to have a competition of my own, and give away the set of five autographed “No-Cry” books by Elizabeth Pantley!

 

Anyone can enter, and to enter I would like you to write a blog post about an old-wives tale that has to do with raising a child, and whether or not you think it has any relevance today (you can find some here if you’re stuck for ideas).

Now I've heard some crazy wives tales like why you should or shouldn't spare the rod and spoil the child and the like but as I am not a parent I will leave this for others in this area.

day at the smithsonian

After over two weeks of catching up on sleep I've finally had time to catch up on my DC vacation photos. Morgan and Roof will be thrilled I'm sure! So tonight I give you a teaser of what Roof and I did at the Smithsonian ...

the metro: redline

One of the best modes of transportations in DC, everything else felt like stepping blindfolded into the middle of Times Square and praying you don't get demolished in 30 seconds. [Taken by Darla. 08 Oct 2009]

75 days and counting

A wise woman once told me that those that haven't experienced deployment or long periods of separated time from spouse/partners can't possibly understand how we feel when someone says something like 'oh he'll be home soon' or 'over half way there!' or 'three months will fly by!' She explained it along the lines of 'why don't you try sticking your head in a doorway and slamming it repeatedly with the door for the next three months or 30 days and see how quickly time flies by.

In truth, the days start to blur together and meld along the edges. It feels like quick snaps in a movie where Monday evolves into Friday and the weekends are a hodgepodge of rapid-fire events and sloth-like moments. I tend to want to feel the adrenaline rush so I can constantly feel alive and imitate the roller-coaster of my love life that normally strums under my fingers. Nothing replaces the heartache, headache, encompassing love and tumultuous thrill ride that has been ingrained in my bones the last nine years.

To add insult to injury the second part of my everyday existence, my MIL-mommate has also been doing an extended road trip to retrieve her stuff. So the two warm talking bodies that complete my kid-less home existence, along with my pets, are leaving me in a quiet world. Any parent of a live-in child could compare it to an extend absence from them all. The noise is what fills in the edges of your day.

His return heralds in another lane that I've been slowing revamping my body to be tuned for: the baby files. With three or so cycles before he comes back I've begun doing the home Ovulation Predictor Kits (OPK) again, and starting to get the Clomid scrips filled. Prior to his departure we had finally achieved the right dosage of Clomid, but it was almost a years worth of dosage in. The emotional meltdown from the trial and error and the chemical warfare on my body only further supported the next 8 month hiatus prior to and through the dep.loym.ent.

We have six doses. Dr Bo, my fertility specialist, says with almost certainty that if those six doses doesn't assist in producing a child in my womb than it's invitro (IVF) is the only option left. And at this stage, with very raw wounds from the two hard fervent years of meds and testing and emotional chaos in my marriage, I'm not sure I'm willing to open that door. Only time will tell.

75 days to go. Let the games begin.

slap your co-worker day is coming!!

October 23rd is the official Slap Your Irritating Co-workers Holiday: 

 
Do you have a co- worker who talks nonstop about nothing, working your last nerve with tedious and boring details that you don't care about? Do you have a co-worker who ALWAYS screws up stuff creating MORE work for you? Do you have a co-worker who kisses so much booty; you can look in their mouth and see what your boss had for lunch? Do you have a co-worker who is SOOO obnoxious, when he/she enters a room, everyone else clears it? Well, I am so very very glad to officially announce SLAP YOUR IRRITATING CO-WORKER DAY!

Here are the rules you must follow:

* You can only slap one person per hour - no more.

* You can slap the same person again if they irritate you again in the same day.

* You are allowed to hold someone down as other co- work ers take their turns slapping the irritant.

* No weapons are allowed...other than going upside somebody's head with a stapler or a hole-puncher.

* If questioned by a supervisor [or police, if the supervisor is the irritant], you are allowed to LIE, LIE, LIE!

Now, study the rules, break out your list of folks that you want to slap the living day lights out of and get to slapping  on October 23rd..... and have a great slapping day!

not so surprising actually

Had a slamming weekend in DC with my baby sister. [insert all appropriate slang for AWESOME, amazing, great, killer, etc etc etc.] Before I share the vacation bits the travel drama is begging to be told.

As all west coast to east coast trips should go, the flights were drastically opposite coming and going. Departing Washington state all flights were on time, seat mates were a riot, no luggage complications and managed to connect perfectly with my sisters arrival time to the airport on the east  coast.

Returning from Baltimore, MD (practically Washington DC) was a whole other ball of wax. The first flight was delayed nearly two hours due to the seasons first snow storm at the connecting layover in Minneapolis. (Lucky for me my connecting flight out of New York was also extremely delayed.) I managed to get on my connecting flight with 10 minutes to spare where I was surprised by running into my duplex-sharing-neighbor on the plane AND the enjoyment of sitting in the plane on the runway for nearly an hour before they released us to head west. The flight itself was fine but the migraine skulking through my skull, chased by the sinus flu crud, was merely an icing to the Your Luggage Is Lost Lost Lost cake.

I stood next to a man named John at the baggage counter, for nearly an hour, plucking hairs out of my tired scalp one strand at a time while we firmly established Mr Baggage Man hadn't the slightest clue where or why our luggage hadn't beat us in. I crawled into my waiting friends car mentality preparing myself for the fact that the majority of my good clothes, tourist items and bathroom gear could be utterly and completely LOST. 

Today dawned fairly early after a 11 hour nap. My pets are at their full obnoxious potential. Every time I close my eyes to nap Dude tries to crawl inside my skin while he purrs his whiskers off. Sue is snuggled up as close to my body as she can get too. Can't really blame them, between me leaving them home alone for a few days [yes they had a sitter/feeder] and the house temp being 60F even with the house thermometer being set at 80.

Right now I have a stupid head cold. I feel like crap and only worked like 5 hours. I am also super happy because the Delta people delivered my VERY LOST luggage today at 9a and saved me spending a lot of money on things like replacement bras, glasses, tourist bits and my fantastic camera WITH ALL MY PHOTOS ON IT. It sucks to be plowing through work after a vacation when you can't breathe and are stuck wearing the bottom of your closet because the cute fitting cloths were somewhere in nomansland. I am in a jovial mood even after all that, ironically, hopefully later this week I'll have energy to get the rest of the chores done.

P.S. Did you know you can drink your weight in thera-flu (liquid cold medicine mixed with hot water) and it is so much easier than swallowing pills that could choke a baby monkey? Delicious and medicinal!

causin' havoc on the east coast

Me and BabySister are having a grand ole time! This was just the beginning of our wild ways.

that's the way the cookie crumbles

A friend of mine and I were having a recent conversation in regards to MrD’s current deployment. I had been remarking about how it’s hard to discuss the future electronically with him. We were also discussing the deployed mindset. When your schedule consists of waking up, 12-14 hr work shits, 1-2 hrs of working out and eating you have a lot of free time to just think. And thinking often leads to questioning careers, future goals in the military, etc etc etc. That being said this was the last and perhaps funniest part of our conversation.

Me: Until he comes back I'm not holding my breath. Letting cards fall as they may at the moment. You know how it is when you have deployed thinking time versus stateside thinking time

Him: Yea it will be mucho better when you guys can talk face-to-face about it! However, a good poker player doesn't count on luck, rather calculated risk and educated guesses... 52 card pick-up is only fun when you get blow up the cards, lol.

That’s right, the core of all partnerships … calculated risk, educated guesses and TNT.

my Roof is on fire!

I can hardly contain my excitement. The tickets have been booked and vacation time reserved from work. At our 1/2 way mark of MrD's deployment I get to celebrate one of the best ways I know how ... loving on family. So I'm off to DC from Thursday at the crack of dawn through Monday afternoon to play with my baby sister Roof! Yay me, go team and the fabulous Woot!

I'll try and catch ya'll up on the flip side. I'm sure I'll have a million stories, a million photos and a million distractions, like my j-o-b.