Versatile Blogger Award

Navy Wife Chronicles began a year after my husband’s accident as form of self-therapy and meditation. Ever since I was a little girl, writing was freeing but never encouraged as a career. Still, like playing the piano and reading, writing touches the part of my brain that allows me to lose myself in the activity without regard to anything or anyone around me.

I first met Readncook when I worked as a Teacher Supervisor. As an experienced teacher, I observed new teachers and offered them feedback on their teaching practices. But really, I had the opportunity to watch these wonderful educators shine and share their talents with their students. Readncook is one of these educators. Thank you, Readncook, for this nomination and how lucky we are that you shine and share your talents through your blog.

The rules of the award are simple:

1. Thank the person who gave you this award. That’s common courtesy.
2. Include a link to their blog.
3. Next, select 15 blogs/bloggers that you’ve recently discovered or follow regularly.
4. Nominate those 15 bloggers for the Versatile Blogger Award.
5. Finally, tell the person who nominated you 7 things about yourself.

Some of these blogs have been around for so long, I am sure that many have already won this award. If you have already been nominated, my hats off to you! YOU ROCK!

When I first started blogging on WordPress, I found a newbie thread on the forums. There I sought advice, gave advice, and discovered these blogs:

1. Dribbling Pensioner
2. Rain into Rainbows
3. Local Heart, Global Soul
4. Balladeer’s Blog
5. Peas and Cougars
6. The Wordslinger
7. Heidi Leanne Craig [A writer I met through NaNoWriMo!]

I met the following bloggers while my husband was a patient at VA Palo Alto. They are courageous, supportive, and wonderful women who also have wounded warrior husbands.
8. Ben and Katie Rye
9. Cale’s Recovery

10. I have been reading Wife of a Sailor for about a year and looked forward to Thursday nights to see what the MilSpouse Friday Fill-Ins questions were for the week. While these fill-ins are now monthly, it is still fun to keep up with the dozens of milspouses who participate.

Here are a few military blogs I think you’ll like. I found most of them via Wife of a Sailor.
11. They Call Me Dependent
12. And You Never Did Think
13. To the Nth
14. Chambanachic
15. AwesomeAlli
15 1/2. Eights on the Move

And I am such a cheater I’ll throw in a bonus one, PostWar Monologues. (This site is amazing and not just because I’ve contributed a couple of the posts!)

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Seven things about myself:

1. While I do not read Stephen King, I do read what he recommends via Entertainment Weekly. The fact that I do not read King embarasses my husband greatly who has read every book King has written.

2. I wrote a manuscript for a chick lit novel that has not seen the light of day for a decade. I do not have immediate plans to read, let alone to revise.

3. My kids are southern by birth. M was born in Augusta, GA. A was born in San Angelo, TX. L was born in Virginia Beach, VA. As they become immersed into California culture, they still have traces of their southern roots. M, probably because of R’s accent, sometimes turns one syllable words into two syllables (example: hair = hay-yair).

4. I love being a teacher but am pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoy being a substitute teacher. The aspect I miss most about having my own classroom is seeing students’ growth from the beginning of the year to the end. I can still be creative and spontaneous as a sub which leads to requests and referrals to sub.

5. I think I left a blue and yellow umbrella in your classroom when I visited two years ago.

6. Going back to school and working in educational policy is a a tiny glimmer in the back of my mind that won’t go away. If I were to get my doctorate, I would attend Stanford or USF. (Ahhh, a girl can dream…)

7. I was on the Academic Decathlon team when I was in high school. When I competed, our school won the county competition for the ninth year in a row and though I won five (?) medals at county I never felt more incompetent and worthless than I did at state. How did I think I could ever compete against hundreds of the most brilliant minds of California, including my teammates? I’m over it now but not before feeling this inadequacy a few more times in college.

These lucky blogs will soon get a cut-and-paste message saying: “Hello [fab writer], I just nominated you for a VERSATILE BLOGGER AWARD. It’s over here. Yee haw!”

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OMG. I was nominated a bazillion years ago but couldn’t figure out how to get everyone’s link activated. My apologies. I am only conversational in Technology, not fluent.

Also, being a married single mom is so hard! GAH! I encounter daily dilemmas such as bickering, possible allergies (Is it Neosporin? Is it the gauze from the band aid? Both?),

discovery of cuss words from graffiti (lesson learned; always skim through pages of books from second-hand shops), and homework. Here is an excerpt of my daugher’s homework page. She’s in first grade.

“Which of these things could you do in about one minute?” “I can’t my mom will get mad”

That’s nice.

Have You Da Wing?

On Wednesday, we met with a priest from our parish who was once a chaplain for the US Army.

On Thursday, we turned in required paperwork including witness testimonies.

On Friday, at 3:00 pm, our wedding began. We said our vows, both a little teary. Then it happened. We were unprepared.

The priest asked, “Do you have the rings?”

R and I looked at each other in total and utter shock. My friend S, who stepped in as a witness when my mother stepped out to answer a phone call (oh, those elderly Filipinas and their cell phones on speaker!), tried not to crack up since she was there to see the looks on our faces.

I wear the ring R bought for our tenth anniversary. He doesn’t wear his for a number of reasons. Sometimes it fits him, sometimes it doesn’t. He doesn’t want it to get scratched when he works out. Needless to say, he was not wearing it now.

What would we do? We only had one ring and I was already wearing it?

Unless…

I bought this five dollar Hello Kitty ring a few months ago and put it on just before we left for the church. I thought it was just enough BLING for an understated wedding.

I took it off quickly and looked questioningly at the priest. He said quietly, “That will do.” I widened the adjustable prongs of the ring for R’s fingers.

Both of the rings were blessed. He put my anniversary ring on my finger. I fought hard not to giggle while putting this ring on his finger.

Sure, we had a thirty hour notice for the wedding and yes, we kind of forgot about the ring part, but there is not a single thing I would change about the wedding.

It was perfect.

Old Dog, Older Tricks

So I read most of To Kill a Mockingbird and the first two Acts of Othello in preparation for Monday’s English sub job. I hadn’t read an assigned text since grad school so this was interesting and somewhat daunting task.

Required reading. Ugh. I wonder how many books I would have actually enjoyed reading had we not HAD to read them. The only book I ever read again after high school and college was Catcher in the Rye.

I enjoyed TKAM but Othello? Not so much. I loved reading Shakespeare in junior high and high school but Othello was difficult for me to read. I don’t know if I am just out of practice reading in iambic pentameter or if I really did not like Othello.

Never have I felt so much contempt for the youth than watching Odyssey. Well, maybe not so much contempt but jealousy. I grew up in the 70s and 80s where claymation among other outdated methods were used as special effects. I still watch the Star Wars trilogy with the same amazement and wonder as I did when I was younger. Don’t even mention the “PREQUELS”; I do not acknowledge they even exist.

You never see the entire sea serpent in the Odyssey, only clips of various human body parts being eaten. Dark lighting, jarring cinamatography, and images superimposed on another image pale in comparison to the special effects today.

How will the youth today appreciate the new effects if they have never seen the old?

MilSpouse Friday Fill-In #23

So over on Wife of a Sailor, Wife posts questions for other bloggers to answer on their own military spouse blogs. (Still with me so far?) And since I was getting married on Friday, I thought it might be fun to fill this out while I sub today. Have I piqued your curiosity? Well, what are you waiting for? Keep reading… (BTW, see #2 for that answer.)

1. What’s one thing in the past month you would have changed?

Nothing comes to mind. I have been trying to adopt a go-with-the-flow attitude, or at least remembering to when I can. I know I have made mistakes and attempted to correct them and/or vowed to not repeat them. I know that life could be a lot easier and without drama, but eh, c’est la vie…

Oh, wait. Maybe when I went on a coffee run at the Disneyland Hotel, I should have had one of these…

Or one of these…

Would you believe that I did not have any of those scrumptious desserts?

2. What was your favorite thing that happened in April?

Everything! The kids were off track and started a free month long trial at a local karate studio. My husband came home and my family threw a party for him the day he arrived. The following day we drove down to Disneyland, partaking in the military discount for the 3-day hopper tickets. Last Friday, we got married!

Again!

When we got married twelve years ago, we did not get married in the Catholic church. On Friday, our marriage was convalidated (I keep saying “consubstatiated” and giggling; all of you Catholics who have been to mass lately know why) in a very brief ceremony with a handful of friends who could make it. It was last-minute but we were grateful that our priest could accomodate us. Ask me later why my husband’s wedding ring is in the shape of Hello Kitty.

3. What are your plans for Memorial Day?

We don’t have plans yet. We don’t live near a base but I look for local commemorative events that honor our veterans.

4. Have you ever traveled Space A? If yes, where… if no, would you ever try it?

I have no idea what Space A means and do not have internet access to Google it. I suppose I would try anything once, especially if I could do this without the kids!

5. What are you looking forward to in May?

I look forward to heading to the gym to work out more and use the pool. School and church are winding down. Nothing quite compares to afternoons at the pool, bringing a picnic lunch, and tiring out the kidlets!

Leave: Warp Speed

Two weeks with my husband have come and gone. We managed to pack a lot into fifteen days. Disneyland. California Adventure. A birthday party for A. The new Avengers movie. A wedding.

How did it go so fast?

When we dropped him off at the airport on Saturday morning, there was a brief threat of red, watery eyes but no tears fell. I don’t know why it was easier for the kids, easier for all of us to say good-bye today.

Every day R and I would talk about how it would only be another year before he comes home without a return flight back to Virginia. Every day R and I talked about how much easier EVERYTHING will be once we live in the same house again. Less bills. More time with the kids. More time with each other.

I forget how much it sucks to be a single parent. How much it truly sucks.

I don’t know how single parents do it.

They’re amazing.

I feel very lucky to have a partner who is a partner in every single way. He respects the boundaries and rules I have established all by myself and enforces them without question. He does more than his share of cooking and will do half of the chores when we divy them up together.

Without him here, I do everything. I have a handle on it most of the time, mostly because I have started to delegate jobs to the kids. When I get overwhelmed, I decide to allow myself to feel the stress and binge on a bit of emergency chocolate or treat myself to a mocha. Only then can I suck it up and move on.

Thirteen and Dodging a Bullet

I accepted a sub job at the same high school for Monday despite feeling a bit empty, so empty that not even chocolate could fill the void.

Yesterday the teacher that I had subbed for three days in a row asked if I wouldn’t mind switching my sub job for his. Even with the handful of really loud, really disrespectful students in every class, the rest of the class genuinely wanted to be there and completed their in-class assignments.

Boy, am I glad I switched! The sub job I had originally been assigned did not have a prep period, meaning I would have taught 4 90-minute classes as opposed to the class I am in now where I only have 3!

Phew!

Yesterday I watched a movie called Thirteen. Have you seen it? It is well-written and has great direction but the subject matter is not for the faint of heart.

Catherine Hardwicke, the director of Twilight, wrote the screenplay with Nikki Reed when she was only thirteen. Thirteen is based on Reed’s life, one that was tumultuous and laden with drugs, alcohol, and promiscuity. In the movie and perhaps also in real life, the character based on Reed has a mother who is struggling with addiction. Nikki Reed later went on to play Rosalie in the Twilight franchise.

I do not judge those who have led this lifestyle but I fear for those who discover this at an early age for whatever reason. I do not want to give away what happens but I brace in fear that our children may one day face these decisions.

If you have seen this movie, what did you think? Do you think this is a movie you could watch with your children and talk to them about it? I welcome all suggestions and all advice!