The Chief just called me. He was standing in a hanger bay in Columbia South Carolina waiting with over 200 other soldiers ready to head out to Kuwait. He said if they didn’t have to stop and refuel it would be a 17 hour flight. 17 hours, that’s all that stands between freedom and safety and the beginning of war. He still states he’ll be safe, although in my most recent conversations with him he’s been a little less insistent. Maybe he learned some things in his ground training, maybe it’s finally sunk in where he’s going, maybe a combination of both. He told me the other day he would be stationed for the next 10 months at Camp Sykes. We can’t find a lot of information about this base on the internet. In fact the most current information either one of us could find was from 2005 and stated:
“Camp Sykes is located in Tall Afar about 40 miles from the Syrian border. The camp is considered to be one of the most dangerous and inaccessible in all of Iraq. The secular nature of Tall Afar’s population has only increased the instability of the area.”
Please, this place has got to of changed in the past three years. It has to of. We’ve made some progress haven’t we? If anyone knows anything about this base, please tell me. There are many people who read this blog who don’t comment, that’s wonderful! I stalk many a blog myself, if one of my readers out there has any information you can share, please email me: kaylyn50 at hotmail dot com. I would really appreciate it.
This is the first time since the Chief told me he was being sent to Iraq that he was anything less than upbeat when we hung up. This was the first time I hung up the phone shaking and in tears.
Am I overreacting? Maybe, but when we can’t trust the media to give us accurate information and we know we can’t, how am I supposed to feel?
Not long after high school one of my friends and one of my brother’s friends began dating. This was fun for us because it began a merger of sorts of our friends. For a good year or so we all hung out every weekend. Pretty soon the two friends got married and had their first child. I was involved with this child from the get go, I was even in the delivery room when he was born. I loved him so much. I was fortunate enough that his parent’s had complete trust in me and from the time he was an infant I would watch him or take him places with me, sometimes to give the new parents a break, sometimes just because I wanted to. He and I were buddies even as an infant and toddler.
When he was about five years old his parents began having severe problems in their marriage and began arguing constantly. These two didn’t care who they were around or where they were. Honestly, it was mostly the wife. She was a red head personified; she had a temper no one wanted to mess with. The poor husband couldn’t win most times. I began taking the child more and more we would go to the park, the zoo, and the circus-heck just to the mall. Anywhere so that he didn’t have to be in the house to hear the arguing. I know that was not my place, but it broke my heart to see this little boy have to live in such an environment. Not long after, the parents split up and (luckily) the child and his new little brother lived primarily with their Dad. Sadly I lost touch with them and until last night I never saw the children again.
Last night my brother’s friend got remarried. I’m very proud of him. He began dating this nice lady maybe around 10 years ago (that would be probably about 2 years after his divorce), she herself had a daughter from a terrible divorce. My brother was talking to his friend’s Dad and asked why they had waited so long to get married. The Dad said about a year ago the boy’s Dad had come to him and said “well, the boys are pretty much grown now (15 and 17), I think I’ll go ahead and get married”. Wow, I have to respect that. I really do. In the process of his conversation with my brother, he asked the friend’s dad if he’d seen the crazy ex-wife lately and the chatted about that for awhile. Then (from what my brother tells me) the dad recognized me. He came over to me and took my arm…
The friend’s family is full Mexican and dad does not speak English well.
He looked me square in the eye and said, “you used to take care of the boy?” I told him yes I did. He just simply said “you do good thing”. I couldn’t believe it. I knew what he meant, but I’d felt so guilty all these years for how crazy the ex-wife had turned out so I felt like I had to make sure he knew that I had NOTHING to do with her anymore. So I told him. He just took my arm again and said it again “you do good thing, I used to tell my wife every time you came to pick him up. You were doing good.” Then he hugged me.
You never know the impact or footprint you are leaving on people when you are doing it. This was such a small thing; in fact my brother even teased me for getting choked up over it. But for him to make a point to tell me, it meant so much.
I went to an event last night and found myself having to run back out to the car. As I hit the parking lot a guy on a motorcycle approached me in an extremely nonthreatening way. He got my attention and pulled up next to where I had stopped walking.
He introduced himself and as he shook my hand asked me my name. I gave it to him. He told me he’d seen me inside a few minutes earlier and wanted to tell me that I was “so pretty”. I was stunned. I couldn’t do anything but thank him for the compliment. He said that was all he wanted and he would let me get on with whatever I was doing and drove off.
A friend of mine is out of town this weekend and asked me to look after his dog. I’ve been going over to his place the past couple of days, letting her out playing with her feeding her you know the norm. This morning we were playing with the baseball-one of her absolute favorite games. We were in the middle of a great game when she had that ball, turned and looked at me then proceeded to bury the baseball in the dirt. Literally! She dug up the dirt, dropped the baseball in and covered it up. Then turned to me as if to say, now try and get it sucker!
My friend better watch it, he may be missing a dog when he gets home. With that kind of attitude she’ll fit in perfectly in this house!
Here’s a picture of Kizzy playing with Katie out at the lake last summer.
Today-April 18th was my 20th anniversary at work. 20 years! Dang! I never thought I would be able to look back at anything and say I’d been anywhere for that long. It hardly seems possible. I’m not sure if I’m loyal, crazy or just afraid of change. Whatever the reason, I’m still there and especially now have no plans of going anywhere.
In my job I work very closely with my manager and my director, both who I will be very sad to leave when I move on to the new department. This manager is the best I’ve had in many years and the director? Well, I told him the other day. “Scarecrow, I think I’ll miss you most of all”. He’s a very quiet person, so much so that when I first started working for him and took him concerns I didn’t think he was listening and thought they wouldn’t be addressed. He would just sit there and let me vent, all the while being almost completely silent. I used to leave that office SO frustrated! Then some time down the road, maybe a month maybe a couple of weeks I would realize my issue was either resolved or in the process of being resolved. He was listening the whole time; he just never felt the need to fuel the fire. That in my opinion is good management.
I was talking to my manager this morning and told her my director stopped by my desk and informed me he and my future boss had met and decided I wasn’t going to be allowed to transfer after all. I told him that was okay, would I still get my raise? He just laughed. My manager got really serious and told me how my director feels this is bitter sweet for him. She said he told her he feels this is a huge loss for them but he also couldn’t hold me back. She told me he would never admit it to me, but he was going to miss me. Then she got choked up. And yes, to all of you out there who may think his thoughts would be less than honorable. He is just my boss. In fact, many of the things he says and does remind me so much of my brother. Maybe that’s why I like him so much. I guess what I’m getting at, with all of this. Because trust me, I’m not one that usually goes on like this about myself is that you never know who in your life you are impacting. If you are happy with the person you are representing yourself as, chances are others will be too.
I took a half day off today to switch a lot of my utility services around. For the past few years I’ve had digital phone, and I’ve always had cable. I took the leap and switched back to a land line and then had a satellite installed. By doing this I will save $50 a month. I hope it will be worth it. People either love or hate satellites. Most of the people I’ve talked to love it. The ones who haven’t liked it have been due to the programming (or lack thereof). So far, I think I have more channels then before, that could be an optical illusion though since the channels are in absolutely no recognizable order. I’m still trying to discover where everything is. I’m a little disappointed in the program guide. It won’t load programs for Monday, this coming up Monday. This could be a product of it being a brand new system though. I’ll give it a few days to catch up and get information loaded. I will say this though; my picture quality is 10X better than it was with the cable! I was seriously considering getting a new television because I thought it was going out. Nope, this signal makes the television look brand new. Nice! I’ll check back in a couple of weeks and see if I’m still satisfied.
Everyone have a great weekend. It’s freezing right now and has been drizzling all day, but Sunday it’s supposed to be 76 degrees!! I’m so happy!
For a while now I’ve had my eye on a different department in my office. Problem has been this department has been under terrible management. I hate to say that about any area of my office, but sometimes you can’t avoid the truth. It seems when there was a position available the management stunk, then when they had great leadership there were no spots open. Ahh, isn’t that how it always goes?This department is comprised of several folks I worked with once upon a time in another lifetime. It just so happens one such person (who actually used to be my supervisor in that other lifetime) decided to leave the company. This is a huge loss for us, but I know she will be much happier where she’s going. I went to give her my congratulations and she asked me if I would be applying for her position. I’d like to say I hadn’t given it a passing any thought, but I had. Not much more than that, though.
My old Sup told me when she gave notice her Director asked if she knew of anyone who could fill her shoes. I was floored when she told me she recommended me. I later found out each person in the department had gone to the Director and recommended me for the job. I was and still am very humbled by this. I think we get used to being stuck in our ruts and go to work every day doing our jobs and don’t realize it’s being noticed by others.
The Job had yet to be posted by Human Resources and word got back to me that the Director had already been referring in staff meetings about tasks that would be assigned to me. Say what??? I hadn’t even expressed serious interest in this yet, at least not outwardly. A few days later one of my friends in that department asked if we could ‘take a walk’ and then began giving me the third degree about applying. I hummed and hawwed, asked some questions about it. She knows me very well. We are within months of each other as far as seniority. She said this job would be a perfect fit for me. Probably more so than any I’ve held in the past 20 years. This will be a complete 180 from what I currently do. Right now my job is quite public. The decisions we make, often end up in the press. We do so many GOOD things but the press doesn’t care about that, they only care about the getting a story and not even an accurate one at that. Ugh, that’s a whole ’nother blog altogether! I digress. The new job would tailor toward my analytical side. The side that likes to do projects and problem solve. The part of me that likes to find out why things aren’t working and fix them. Am I crazy? How could I NOT want this? Oh, yeah and jeans every Friday and after my training period the opportunity to work from home once a week. I applied for the job and it was the most unusual interview I’ve ever been in. I felt like the Director was selling his department to ME. Really, talk about flattered! This never happens to me. Ever! I really just sit at my desk and do my job. After some salary negotiation I accepted the position. Next came telling my bosses…They took well. Although they already knew. It’s amazing the things that happen on the back end that us little peons don’t know about. My director and my new director had been talking all week! Who knew? My current boss told me he told the new one that he wished he could say something bad about me so that he wouldn’t want me, but he couldn’t think of anything. I asked if he warned him that I was stubborned, pig headed, short tempered and loud? He said yeah and he wanted you anyway!
So, I’ll be ‘transitioning’ into a completely new role. I mean completely, this will be a whole new world. I’m ready for it though. In the upcoming weeks I’ll be training my current boss on how to do my job while learning my new one. Wow. This will be busy, busy, busy.
A close friend of mine introduced me to this song. Lately it’s just fit my emotional state of mind right now. I have such Spring fever, it’s hard not wishing you had someone to share it with. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t throw pity parties for myself (at least not often) and I’m going to do my best not to start now. What I’m going to try to do, is what this song says. Enjoy life! I’m going to enjoy who I am. I’ve never been someone who thinks their life is validated by a man (thank God! lol), and I’m not going to start now.
Take a listen to the song. It’s great. Don’t Forget to Dance by The Kinks
My niece had her first communion yesterday. I had to post a couple photos real quick now that I’ve had a chance to go through them. I hope her Mom and Dad don’t mind. I love them. I think they are great!
In a Catholic mass we have actual wine, not fake wine a.k.a. grape juice :). This first picture was right after she tasted the wine.
This next one I think is just a beautiful picture of her…
I was so proud of her. It seemed like an exceptionally long mass, and an even longer day and she was so good. I’ll write more about it later.
I tell people all the time that no one can control your mood except you. Why can’t I take my own advice?? Why????
I woke up this morning on the right side of the bed. Okay, I was a little tired. I slept in a little. Usually when I do this, I’m not quite as alert as I usually am. That said, I don’t think I was grumpy or short tempered or even irritable. So why is it that one statement made by one person could ruin my entire day? Why did I allow her that kind of power? Why as humans do we allow people that kind of power? I wish I knew…
The Chief just called me. He was standing in a hanger bay in Columbia South Carolina waiting with over 200 other soldiers ready to head out to Kuwait. He said if they didn’t have to stop and refuel it would be a 17 hour flight. 17 hours, that’s all that stands between freedom and safety and the beginning of war. He still states he’ll be safe, although in my most recent conversations with him he’s been a little less insistent. Maybe he learned some things in his ground training, maybe it’s finally sunk in where he’s going, maybe a combination of both. He told me the other day he would be stationed for the next 10 months at Camp Sykes. We can’t find a lot of information about this base on the internet. In fact the most current information either one of us could find was from 2005 and stated:
Thanks for always coming by go see me....