a HUGE gear change

so.  charles is not deploying. 
yea.
he had to go to a different post yesterday for some paperwork and a doctor's appointment to have his ears looked at.  the doctors here had told him that his ears looked kinda messed up and that he should go there for a closer look but it was likely nothing.  boy were they wrong!  this surgery is what he will have to do.  his is pretty much the most serious of what is described on that site - his bones in his ear are mush and his ear drum is burst and infected, if it gets worse he will have hearing loss/vertigo/brain damage/facial paralysis, etc.  hence, he's not going anywhere.  he will be having surgery on 5 January and again 6 months later to reconstruct the bones in  his ear.  with any luck, all will go as planned and this hiccup will not result in a medical chapter (being kicked out of the military for medical reasons). 
he is actually doing amazingly well with the news, better than i am in fact.  he's adopted a "well, i can't control it and i have to take care of myself before i can worry about career progression" attitude.  i'm still stuck on "huh."  it took me several hours yesterday to realize that i should be thankful and happy about this.  and i am... now... pretty much.  it's not that i wanted him to be away from me, more that i wanted him to do this for his career and to have the experience.  we would also have been earning a lot of extra money, and deployments/time spent apart are always good for our relationship.  plus, i had lots and lots of plans to keep myself occupied while he was gone.  i dont like to keep super super busy while he's home so that i can focus on him; but most of my plans involved things to get myself healthy (lots of time at the gym and more healthy groceries/meals).  granted, these are things i should do anyway even with him here, but i dont do it as much as i should.  so yea, must find a new balance. 
bright side: he will now be (forced) able to get his ears fixed, and with equal importance: he will be able to pursue an appointment with a urologist to get cracking on our fertility issues. 
i have NO idea why God has given us this new change of direction, i'm just along for the ride really.  but suffice it to say that the ride just got much more interesting.

an attempt to stay connected

i've been having the urge to blog lately but have put it off since i dont really have anything to blog about other than the usual deployment updates (which somehow always end up being depressing or too rant-full... which is a word i just made up).  so here's me trying to do a *happy post*:
i bought leggings!  yea, that's right - leggings.  i LOVE them!  and for once, i have invested in a trend while it is still popular instead of denying my affinity for it and waiting till 2 years after it's mainstream effect has passed before sporting it proudly.  my only delema with the leggings seems to be finding sweaters long enough.  all my height is in my torso, hence a simple "tunic sweater" won't always suffice.  while i do very much love the trend in longer tops and sweaters, unless i want to walk around in form-fitting stretchy pants with my butt cheeks hanging out, not all tunics are acceptable.  however i did find a couple at kohls yesterday, and for $13 no less!  but i will be taking them back today after work to have the ink tags removed... that's the 2nd time i've come home with an ink tag still attached and i learned my lesson trying to pry off the first one.  green paint on a denim skirt - no fun.
i've been eating my feelings - and i seem to be having a LOT of feelings lately.  so i'm very much looking forward to the hostile takeover of my body come january.  i've even toyed with the idea of turning my blog into a weight loss diary of sorts and posting pictures of my progress... but that might require you to see me in some sort of bathing suit capacity - so be warned.

OH!  and i'm a godmother again.  i had the supreme honor of being present for the birth of a friend's daughter at the beginning of November.  they just asked me to be godmother on saturday.  Jeremy used to work with Charles and was away at school and little Kaitlyn decided to arrive about a month early so Kelly called me in the middle of the night on November 9th and the adventure ensued!  As you can see, it was a bit of a rocky start of the little one but she's doing well now.

she was in the hospital for 2 weeks to give her lungs time to catch up with the rest of her and she still has to wear a monitor when sleeping to make sure her oxygen levels are ok.  but overall, she's quite the trooper.  she's my little pal.  i have quite a connection with her and her parents, even more than i did.  it's just amazing.  sadly, i wont know her for very long because they will be moving away in April.  jeremy does not do the same job as Charles so it is not likely that we will ever see them again, but such is life.  in the mean time, it's pretty amazing.