getting ready

well, with t-minus 3 weeks or so before charles leaves, i'm doing my best to soak up as much of him as possible. he has been off of work and clearing the post since monday, so i've had a week of him being home most of the time, which is nice. it's strange, i am amazingly emotionally detatched from the fact that he's leaving. i know it's coming, and i know it's going to suck, but i'm ok. i can only hope that when i put him on the plane i will be equally ok, but i also somehow know that i won't. i am constantly grateful for his serenty about the situation. i think that's what keeps me so calm. and i'm coming up with lots of things to do to keep me active and busy over the next year. hopefully that will make it easier and help speed the time along.
he is doing a great job of keeping me upbeat. yesterday he went to ACS (army community services) and gave them my contact information. they will contact me once when he leaves to make sure i'm ok and offer to help me if needed; and they also host many events throughout the months for deployed spouses, as we are called. also, through the housing office, there are meetings and priveleges i can partake in. i dont see myself as the type to "reach out" and go join all the clubs and get together with a bunch of weeping women and their 20 bratty kids and lament my struggles in communion with other husbandless people, but i suppose it's nice to know i have that option if i get REEALLY desperate.

down with the sickness

so, after a rousing bout with some nasty food poisoning last weekend, i spent the whole week recovering. then friday night i ended up having a bit too much to drink and experienced my first hangover, it was a bad one. hence, saturday was spent trying not to puke. then sunday, i finally caught the nasty nasty cold that my husband has been dealing with. so i spent sunday on the couch moaning and groaning. today, i am currently at work, but doubt i'll make it beyond lunch. bad cold symptoms plus bubble guts gergling all over the place. bad things are happening in my body right now and i don't appreciate it!

beanie weenie

in typical camacho dog fashion, we have another slut bucket in the family. with shameless enthusiasm, this is the position of choice for my little puppy if someone so much as moves a hand toward her. "scratch my belly!" or "take me now!"?

here is beanie showing off her new source of entertainment: cage perching. i was doing dishes the other night and didn't hear her bell tinkling as it does when she's walking around. suspecting mischief, i turned to look for her and saw her staring at me from on top of her cage like the queen of the world, as if to say "what? you're just jealous that you can't fit your fat ass on here!". and thus began an evening of espionage, on my part, to use my super-duper sleuth skills to try and inconspicuously reach for the camera, turn it on, and adjust the zoom so that i could turn quickly and take her picture before she would suspect trickery and jump down to investigate.

she is quite the mamma's dog. she is very independant, but if i dare sit on the couch or the floor, i pretty much have to peel her off of me before i can stand up. this is usually where a rousing game of fetch begins:

don't be fooled by the female bonding rituals, she does reserve special attention just for dad. here she is dancing around on his belly after he abondoned his attempts to get a better picture of her sitting on her cage and decided it best to lay on the floor and let her walk all over him. he is the only person for whom she will give special kisses. he gets in her face, gives her the "shmooopsy" tone of voice, calls her his "babies" and politely asks for "kisses", which are enthusiastically given - with special attention to the insides of his nostrils.

welcome, friend

:o) this is mainly for erin, but since i only have now THREE people who read my blog, the information is just as well for mom and lizabeth too. :o) in answer to your questions: charles reports early march. we will be in wichita together for about 10 days, marking the longest we've been home at the same time since before we were married. we're both very much looking forward to it, except for the inevitable "goodbye" that will come at the end. we hate that part, but it must be done. sometimes being a military wife really sucks, but when i think about how much more it will suck for him to be gone than for me to be here, i can't complain too much. plus, it helps a lot that he is so "mission-oriented". he doesn't make a big deal out of it because it truely is his job, no matter where he's told to do it, he has to go. so how can i get all fussy about it, it's just what he has to do just the same as i have to support him in it?

the "new" haircut i think is the one from my blog picture, but i have a much better one now. i do have some christmas pictures with it. from an objective point, it might not be too bad. but me, i just see my fat face. thoughts?

ok, now after all the monkeying around with the picture, i forgot what other questions there were. sorry.

however, i have lost 5 pounds in 2 days! i am currently home from work recovering from the worst case of food poisoning i've ever had in my LIFE! i'm now going to attempt to keep down some rice. never had rice sounded so good until i couldnt keep down so much as a sip of water for a whole day. and so with opptimism, i forge ahead!

new work duties

well, i think today i got hit with a bit of a bomb: behold my stress level and my work level going up by a many points! so - i've been really pretty busy at work lately: i do my own job of keeping up with the bills and accounting, while helping claudia with the secretary stuff. super duper. i have my moments of troubleshooting genius on occasion, so my newer co-workers, the 2 housing counselors with large amounts of people coming in have decided that i can be their bitch too, so i help them out as well. i sign leases, i help plan the student run, i teach them how to do their jobs, and latley i spend many hours troubleshooting issues with Time Warner for the 30 or so accounts that i also manage while helping to coordinate the delivery of furniture from Nebraska Furniture Mart. i was balancing all of that quite well until news of the upcoming deployment and hopefully a move gave me more to think about. how much will it suck to be here alone? can i hold down the fort at home by myself? how the hell am i going to decide what to pack and what not to pack? can i pay bills and save enough money for the inevitable period of unemployment in washington? so many questions... well ok, so today, as i was pondering which days i will use my 80 vacation hours on while charles is on leave before he goes over there, we were all called into a meeting. my boss, the greatest boss in the world, has turned in her 2 weeks notice. this i knew. naturally the whole office was abuzz with theories of who would replace her. low and behold, it's by good ol' buddy: denise. denise the marketing director with questionable morals who is the teacher's pet. ok, that's all fine and well. she is an extremely competent marketing director, and her position as "TEMPORARY" replacement might not be too bad, but how will she handle being marketing director AND assistant community manager, you ask? me. i was held after the meeting to find out that i will become the "assistant marketing director" while she fills in until another person can be found.
i find myself torn. on one hand, it will be nice to have plenty of work to keep me occupied. on the other: WHAT?! i'm WHAT!? and if there was a 3rd, more calm and serene hand to be had, it would hold a very flashy resume which bears MANY titles aquired over the last several months, to which "assitant marketing director" may now be added.
it's been a long time since i had so many balls to juggle, and that's fine. i just wish one of them didnt mean giving up my husband for a year and juggling the rest of them by myself.

f.y.i.

beanie weenie has gas and is still sleeping on my lap and i don't appreciate it.

Christmas stuff and things

WOW! what a great Christmas i had! it would have been better if charles hadnt been working, but all things considered, it was pretty damn awesome. i know it's not all about the presents, but let me just say, i got some REALLY cool presents. for instance:

this is my Beanie Weenie!!!!!

I also got a bad ass mixer, thus completing my mission to have the "ultimate kitchen"; and i got a Bose ipod dock, also bad ass. those are the 3 big things - but i thought it might be kinda lame to take a picture of a mixer and an ipod dock. however that does NOT lessen their coolness.

presents are all well and good, but the absolute BEST part of christmas was spending it with my family! what an excellent respite - to spend so much time with them, especially my elusive world-traveling brother!!!!!!! we were all in haysville for a couple of days before spending a few more here at my house. we ate nice dinners and went shopping and i even got to make Christmas dinner (a couple of days late, but the sentiments were the same) for mom, dad, cameron, and of course charles! all 5 of us at the same table!!!! what a special time!

another special time: that friday before new years, we had dinner reservations at the Peppercorn Duck. (mom has those pictures, so i'll post them later so everyone can see how hot we were) but before dinner, i insisted that we go sledding down the HILL OF DEATH on post. it didnt take a whole lot of convincing to get everyone on board, so as soon as i got off work, we donned our greatest cold-weather apparel and out we went! many swear words and much bruising of butts later, here we were:

You'd never know that the 3 of us have a combined age of 76 years old, the way were were flying down that hill. mom and dad went too, a highlight of which being the time mom and i went down on the 2 person sled in front of a bunch of little kids with mom shouting " SHIIIIIIIIIT!!!!!" all the way down the hill. i love my family!