Bitter Ex-Nuke Wife

Gettysburg Wine and Music Festival 2010

This is the booty from this year's event.  We love the Gettysburg Wine Fest. www.gettysburgwineandmusicfestival.com

Although we have only been there two times, we have had such great times that we can not imagine a September in the future that doesn't include the event.  Our first venture in 2009 was rain soaked but we just got wine soaked and had a wonderful time.

2010 was gorgeous on Saturday, which was the day we were there.  In addition to the myriad wineries offering generous samples of any or all of their vintages there are food vendors and crafts people.  Most are local to the Gettysburgh are.  As afternoon slid into early evening we sat on a blanket,  noshed on bread and cheese from an event vendor,  drank two bottles of wine with the couple that joined us that weekend, and enjoyed the sounds of The Tom Larsen Band.  Good music, good food, good friends, good wine.  It is all good.

A Cantore Story

So, there was this one time when we thought that the stinky sub would actually be home for a few weeks that summer.  Life was going along fairly uneventful; each day starting and ending on happy notes because John was home.  Yea, he was in 3 section duty but that was the way it had always been and it sure beat all hell out of port & starboard duty.  This, as an aside, truly blows giant bubbles.  The summer weather had been most enjoyable for several weeks.  The stifling heat and humidity that Southern Virginia is noted for had not started up and the neighbors were most generous with sharing their in-ground pools with us.  Yes, we were shiny happy people.  And then the storm came.

 

I don’t recall the name of this storm but it was given a name and we started tracking its projected path across the Atlantic, all the while hoping that Jim Cantore was not coming to Norfolk this time.  We had learned that when Jim came to town the weather was sucking, and usually blowing with wind speeds greater than 100 mph.  All Navy Wives know that when a storm is approaching that the call for a ‘sortie’ is coming and we also know that it is invariably up to us to get out there in the screaming mob of frantic shoppers and snap up what we consider to be necessary supplies to ride out the weather and the clean-up afterwards. 

 

To some people this means an acre of plywood and 50 lbs of nails, 1,000 rolls of toilet paper, 20 gallons of milk and all the bottled water in a tri-state area.  Why these particular items were purchased storm after storm, year after year, I will never know because once you have plywood you have it.  If you use a modicum of patience and care when taking the sheets down they can be dried out and stored in a garage or shed without taking up too much room.  Nails can’t always be used again but it doesn’t require 2 nails per ½”

to secure a sheet of plywood.  As for the toilet paper, one only needs to ask themselves ‘how much do we normally use in a week?’ and then go with that amount.  If power is out for any amount of time, say more than 2 days, the National Guard is going evacuate everyone except the looters to safer places and I doubt that a stash of toilet paper will keep these losers from kipping your stereo equipment.  Milk requires refrigeration.  If power is out for more than 2 days it is going to spoil…’nuff said about that.  

 

This particular storm came fast so when John went to work for what should have been a duty day we considered that the boats would sortie and he would not be home for a few extra days.  We thought maybe five days in all as they would have to wait their turn to come back in and be tied up after the hurricane passed through.  Five and a half weeks later…

 

Yes, the hurricane came and as always we were personally very fortunate that our home and neighborhood suffered little damage and power was restored in less than two days.  We had potable water within the week and all things were looking good, until The Phone Tree Call came through.  Seems like our hard working husbands were going to have to take the place of another sub that was scheduled to find and track a Russian sub that was supposedly lurking off the eastern seaboard.  No small feat but a doable one.  Well, it seems that the sub scheduled to do this was so not into performing their duty that the CO actually radioed squadron that his ship could not perform as ordered and that his crew needed to come home and have some time off.  Oh, yes, he did.  The kicker is this…they already had been tracking said Russian sub and had grown ‘tired’ of being at sea and they wanted to come home.  So, hubby’s CO was ordered to get on the trail of the quickly disappearing Russian sub and track it.  The details of this impromptu deployment are still a mystery to me.  I guess it was one of those top secret missions that the Silent Service brags about that they can’t talk about it in mixed company.  Uhm, whatever. 

 

The boat been scheduled for some down time after just coming home from a 3 ½ month run and then were scheduled for a couple of weeks in the shipyard to have some new equipment installed.  They hadn’t done a proper stores load in weeks and none of the crew was emotionally ready for anything more than a quick sortie and back to the pier to resume their down time.  So when the Phone Tree Call came through with some of the most hated words a submariner’s wife can ever hear “The boat is being detained at sea.  We don’t have a return date and we don’t know if Family Grams will be allowed.” There was only one thing to do, go shopping for supplies to weather the ‘storm’.  Alcohol, Diet Pepsi, cigarettes and food for the child.  She much preferred Kudos, Cheerios and frozen yogurt to Captain Morgan and Diet Pepsi.  FTN Baby.

What Happens In Vegas...

P1020984

A Funeral Mass and A Wake

My uncle passed away and his internment was this past weekend.  He was married to my beloved aunt for 57 years.  They were the epitome of what a happy marriage should and could be.  Their devotion to each other was unsurpassed by anyone I have ever met and their eight children adored them both.  To witness the grief of this loving family during the mass and at the cemetery tore my heart in two.  I wept for their loss, my own feelings trivial in compare. 

 

The passing of a beloved family member is a profoundly sad occasion and when that person is beloved by everyone, even non-family members; it is even more difficult to bear the sorrow that tears at your heart.  Not only will his large and loving family miss him in their lives, my uncle will be missed everyday by so many people; from the waitress who will look up when the bell over her door tinkles, expecting to see him arriving for coffee and toast, to the tellers at the bank, to the cashiers at the grocery store, to the driver of the bus his grandchildren ride.  All of them and so very many more will miss him everyday for a long, long time. 

 

The memory of my cousins standing in a protective circle around their mother at the gravesite while military honors were performed and final prayers and blessings said is both sad and loving.  The wake was memorable, no one has ever been sent to heaven with as many blessings and as much laughter as he was.  The send off was done in grand style and in accordance with my uncle’s wishes. We followed his wishes that we celebrate his life and remember him fondly.  In direct violation of his wishes we cried as well, but he must have been forgiving us as he looked down because it was never long before someone would tell another tale and the smiles would once again emerge. He had lived a long and good life.  He fought in WWII and Korea, he married his soul mate, he raised eight children and he had friends who would have given their life for him.  He was a quiet man with a set of values that were carved in stone.  He did not tolerate deliberate wrong behaviors, but he understood that we are all human and he would help to make it right when a bad choice was made.  He was a proud man and he was an honorable man.  He had a sense of humor that set him apart from his peers.  He never used foul language in front of his wife, daughters, granddaughters, nieces, any female.  He stood by every member of his family, and if your name was listed somewhere in the family tree then you were ‘his family’.  How fortunate we were to have shared his life and we are all better people because of him.

 

I now believe that the reason for a wake is to pull the living back from the brink of despair as soon after the funeral as possible.  My family has always done a fine job of putting on a great party and this sad occasion was no exception.  It is a good thing we were so many and so strong at this time for without the amount of love and laughter we shared that sad, sad day the grief would have been too much to handle.  Family is what it is, but we need our kin to share the ups and downs of being in a family.  My cousins are my kin and we share a bond, now more than ever. I will miss you too Uncle Bill, for a long, long time.

Hey Betch, Your Job is Not To Update Your Facebook Status

In this day of rampant unemployment one would think that the gainfully employed, especially the ones drowning in consumer debt, would work their asses off when they are on the clock.  One would think.  However, where I work not everyone thinks at all, let alone thinks that completing 8 hours of productive work is beneficial to keeping their job.

 

Case in point:  There is one person in AR and she won’t do one iota of work more than she needs to do.  Apparently she does not appreciate that her job is pretty damned important.  Consider that if she does not get the billing out on time then no money comes in from our clients.  Completing this job once a month appears to be so much more than she can handle that there have been months when she was so late getting it done the next billing cycle has started.

 

As an aside:  Why she is even still employed here is beyond me but I’m not the president so my opinion isn’t solicited in these matters.

 

Do not think for even one minute that there is too much work for just one person.  There is not enough work for one person in this sorry economic time.  It’s just that her priorities at work are more akin to making and receiving upwards of 10 personal calls a day, playing Bejeweled Blitz on Facebook, posting status updates on Facebook, and commenting on everyone of her 100+ Facebook friends status’.  Come on Lil Missy, you weren’t hired to play on Facebook.  As a matter of fact Facebook wasn’t even an option when you were hired seven years ago.  We can also consider the enormous amount of spam-like emails she forwards to everyone.  Would that be more work time spent on non-work related tasks?  Why yes, yes it would be.

 

Why do I give a rat’s ass about her dink work habits?  Because I am perpetually flogged with HER WORK to keep the department on track and to keep HER OFFICE from looking like a room from Buried Alive.  All the overkill filing, sorting, more filing, making folders, making labels, stuffing envelopes, printing mailing labels,  the list goes on ad nausea.  She has become so brazen in expecting me to do HER WORK that she just lugs the boxes of months old invoices to sort and file up to my desk and tells me that it needs to be done, now. 

 

I suppose it it could be worse.  I could be living her life.

Vacation, all I ever wanted...

Why are the lives of my Facebook friends so much better than mine?  The pictures they post from their childhoods have me green with envy; not only that they have loving families, both immediate and extended, but that they traveled and went on vacations. And not just to Disney World but to foreign countries with fabulous beaches, mountains, and historical buildings.  I didn’t have any of that, not one bit as a child. Not the loving parents, nor the kindred relationships with my siblings.  We didn’t leave near our extended family so there were no friendships with cousins either.  Nothing that even comes close to a family.

 

Consequentially, I have no pictures with any ohh and aahh value to post on my FB page.  And I do peruse my friend’s pictures, especially when one of them posts an album aptly named Family Fun that depicts events from our younger days.  What really sucks is when I can recall most of the events pictured and not as a participant mind you, but as an envious listener as my friend recanted the tales of a fabulous trip they had just returned from with their family.  The super lucky friends didn’t have to settle for just their parents as vacation providers, they had two sets of grandparents and sometimes aunts and uncles they traveled with.  Not every trip was an over-the-top 4 star adventure.  Sometimes the vacation was camping in a national park, or a quick weekend at the local lake side tent site.  This was still a cause of envy for me because it was the time spent with loving and fun people that I wanted, craved and yearned for so much more than the destination itself. 

 

Having no memories or experiences of vacations from my childhood to draw from, it stands to reason that as an adult and sadly, a parent, I was never one to get my family packed up and on the road to adventure.  For a few years we did migrate to Colorado for a week of fabulous skiing courtesy of my in-laws and the home they owned in Summit County but, that is about it for family fun.

 

Now that my only child is 25 and is no longer asking to go to Mickey Mouse’s House, or to the “space place to see the rockets”, or to Grandmas and to see the animal house (zoo) I am finally beginning to appreciate that vacations and travel are an awesome way to spend time and money.  I refuse to get started on regrets and sorrow over missed opportunities.  I would wallow in the pond of misery for too long. 

 

So thanks Facebook friends, for having such fabulous lives, and for sharing all the wonderful pictures of your perfect adventures.  In addition to drooling envy at the façade of your lives I am finally figuring out that even in this year that I turn 50, it is not too late to start having a life.  Pictures coming soon!

This is the House That Selfishness Ruined

This is the house that James McKean bought for his family 145+ years ago. It was just a few years old when he bought it from the builder, who was a stone mason. It is a family home and if you can zoom the picture there are people standing on the porch, and they are great-great grandparents.  Maybe another great is in there but I really don't know.  My mother spent her formative years in this house with her grandmother and when she was able to buy it about 30 years ago, she did.


This is the same house that my mother let fall into near ruin...wanting it and restoring / maintaining it are two entirely different trains of reality for her.  The woman I share similar DNA with is a dragon and she spends on frivolous and selfish things rather than home repairs and mortgage payments. 



Because one view of despair just isn't enough.  These pictures are 10 years old...and PA winters are harsh. 

QotD: Merry Christmas to All and To All a Good Night

How and where are you spending this Christmas Day? Make spirits bright by sharing a photo!

My husband, daughter and I will be spending the day at home.  It will be quiet and that is how we like it. 

 

If you are a family that has little ones I hope you hear lots of laughter, squeals of joy and shouts of happiness. 

 

Whatever you like to do on Christmas, I hope that you able to do it, and not feel forced to be somewhere or do something that you prefer not to.  

 

 

All This Christmas Giving

 

 

Call me what you want but I can not find the spirit that is supposed to be of this season.  I love the lights and decoration, the carols, and the funny and fun songs; I like the colors and the bells.  What I don't like is the premise that I HAVE to buy this and that for this person and that person, too.

I guess you could say that I have one foot in the holiday pool and the other on the terra firma of everyday reality.  I have one child; she is 24 so I don't know how I fall in the category of having a child to buy presents for, however, she lives at home while she fiddles around with college and a job.  We help her out, albeit too much, during the year, and are generous for her birthday and other gift giving occasions such as needing new tires for her truck, vacation (LAST one I am paying for) and other times just because it is habit to buy her things.  She is not a fashionista and her taste is jewelry is simple and classy.  Real gems in real gold or platinum, thank you very much. Her box of jewels is hardly overflowing but what she has is really nice, and will last her a lifetime.

So, here is the dilemma I face.  I am being goaded into buying stuff and things for the sake of having wrapped gifts for her on Christmas morning.  With no heed being paid to the my replies that I have already purchased what she said she really wants;  gift cards to her favorite stores so she can capitalize on the After Christmas Sales.  Smart girl in my book, and she would rather not have to stand in the never ending lines to return stuff I picked out so she can have either the money or the store credit to get what it is she wants. 

 

Is this really a dilemma or am I feeling some buried guilt that I short changed her when she was a kid with the number of gifts she had to open.  As soon as she was old enough to tell us (Santa) what she wanted I would buy everything that she asked for.  Too much you say?  Not really because she didn’t ask for the Toys R Us inventory to be under her tree.  She would have two or three toys that she wanted and by golly, if that was all she wanted then she was going to get everything that she asked for.  For five years she was the only grandchild and niece so she did score some mighty hauls.  But only because both sides of her family were thrilled to have a little one running around at Christmas and they enjoyed the whole ‘bright eyes and aahhs’ that only a child can express.

 

Time passes and other children came into our families and since we were a Navy family we didn’t always get ‘home for the holidays’ which left my daughter to get what people were willing to mail.  It didn’t take long for everyone, including the recipient, to figure out that money or gift cards were the way to go.  My daughter is fine with this arrangement and has been since 5^th grade.  So why now, the push to have heaping piles of stuff to open?

 

I think the entire idea of giving lots of gifts for the sake of things to wrap and then unwrap is ludicrous.  And for most people, a profane use of the money they should be spending on the bills they are behind on due to their economic hardships at this time.  Personally, we aren’t suffering from the economy and we know that we are fortunate for that but it doesn’t mean that I am going to spend outrageous sums of money for gifts that she neither wants nor needs. 

 

I have not knuckled under to the pressures from my co-workers but it has caused me to pause and think about the entire holiday rituals that people push on themselves and others.  My husband & I are not big on giving gifts to each other either.  We have all the stuff we want, and we do want for something then we buy it right then.  Or, if we can’t afford to pay cash on the spot we discuss our saving strategy to accommodate the purchase.  This eliminates any surprises but it guarantees total satisfaction with the purchase and to us this is worth a surprise.  Call us boring but it is an arrangement that has worked for 28 years of marriage. 

 

Yes, we do get each other presents during the year as the occasion arises.  One example was a time my husband was at sea and one of his favorite authors had a new book released.  I bought it for him and when he got home he was very pleased with the ‘homecoming gift.’  Had I waited for Christmas so I could present it as a gift, he would have either bought if for himself not knowing I already had it hidden away, or I would have had to have told him I had already purchased the book but he would have to wait for three weeks because it was wrapped and waiting for December 25^th.   How dumb is that? 

 

I am of the mind that the ideas that we should treat everyday like it is Christmas, that we should be kind and giving everyday and not just for a few weeks in December are actually very good ideas.  I do try to be kind all year so it galls me when the biggest bitches turn loving and kind, at least on the surface in hopes that their Secret Santa will come through with a gift worthy of their saintliness.  Bah!  Humbug!  And why must we give gifts to our coworkers when often is the case that we don’t socialize with them outside of the office; we don’t consider them friends in our personal lives and they reciprocate the feelings?  Even a $10 gift card adds up when you work with fifteen people.  Hello utility bill not getting paid on time!

 

I’ll take the music, the decorations and the good spirits for the holidays.  Oh, and the cookies, too.  As for the ritual of glutinous spending on stuff and things, to that I say Bah! Humbug!

QotD: Age-Old Question

If you could be any age again for one week, what age would you be?

I must insist that I get to have the wisdom of hindsight along with the return to a youger age.  Given that, I would be 24 again.  That is the year my daughter was born and I would love to have even one week of that time back.  Knowing what I know now I would be a better parent beginning with the early part of her life.