Today will probably be the day that the fate of Ellsworth AFB is decided upon. The BRAC has convened and has handed down decisions about Army Posts and Naval Stations in the past few days.  They started discussing Air Force Bases yesterday afternoon, and will carry those discussions over to today. There's been a lot of anger over the placement of Elssworth AFB, SD on the closure list.  Part of John Thune's platform for election last year was that he was the best person to assist ...

I've been watching a lot of Black Adder recently and seem to have developed a crush on Rowan Atkinson.  Yes, you read that right. I have a crush on Rowan Atkinson. It's his dry sarcasm that does it, I think.  I find him hysterically funny...so deadpan in his delivery of scithing one liners it just cracks me up. I'm off to watch 'Blackadder 3' now....get a half hour dose of Rowan before the kids come home.

The people who are responsible for Beau's adoption called last night.  They want to come for a home visit this weekend and bring Beau with them.  We're going to see how we all get along. I had sent an email explaining how I felt about adopting Beau, what my thoughts were about dog training and having AmStaffs with children and what I planned to do if we were given the opportunity to have Beau come live with us. They were pretty impressed, they said. I raised Henry using the 'L...

When I was a little girl, I learned how to play the recorder in school.  We had a little recorder band going, and we played at Christmas concerts and school plays.  Last week, I got our Jake a sporano recorder.  He's been wanting to learn how to play something, and I thought that the recorder would be a good place to start.  (His brother is learning how to play the harmonica, his sister's learning how to play my guitar, and their dad has voiced an interest in learning to ...

D and I watched a documentary about some Spec.For guys in Afghanistan last night. Four American soldiers worked with the Afghani Militia and went around to various villages and settlements, working on Intel they'd been given about weapons caches and Taliban activity. These villages they went to were remote and desolate.  There was no industry, no agricultual opportunities....they couldn't even grow the opium poppies that other viallges relied on for income.  They had nothing...

When Dave and I found out that he had orders to England in 2003 we had to make some tough decisions.  We had an AmStaff dog named Chyna.  She was a beautiful animal, she was our baby.  When we got orders we decided, after many tears and much heartbreak, to find her a good home here in the US because we didn't think that we would be able to take her with us.  We found her a home, and off she went.  I cried for days, as did Dave. When we found out that our orders g...

I don't know where my life is headed.  I don't know if the current state of my marriage is going to improve or if this is the beginning of the end. I don't know what the universe has in store for me. I do know that I'll be okay.  I do know that I'm tough and that things, whilst they may overwhelm me sometimes, won't keep me down permanently. I do know that I'll survive.   

'I am human and I need to be loved... ....just like everybody else does'.   Everything I do is wrong.  From the way I talk to my taste in food, from my actions one day to my inactions the next.  Everything.  I. Do. Is. Wrong.  It's displeasing.  It pisses him off. I don't know how much more I can take and still be sane.  He's going to end up breaking me.....

I found out yesterday that my mother in law will be having a hysterectomy next Thursday, and I'd like to ask y'all to pray for her. Despite our recent difficulties, Cindy is a great mother in law.  She's been having some problems of late, and her doctor decided that the best way to fix her is to perform a hysterectomy.  I keep telling her that she's going to feel so much better afterwards and that it's one of the best things I ever did, but she's still pretty stressed about it (whic...

That's what the surgeon said to me this morning when he examined my incison.  I'm pretty happy with it too.  It's flattening out nicely.  I think that I'm going to get it tattooed....he said for me to give it 6 months to settle down, which I was going to do anyway - and I don't know of a tattoo artist who would agree to ink a scar less than that old anyway. I've found some designs of tribal dragons that I think would look awesome along the length of my scar.  So fa...

It wasn Henry's birthday yesterday.  He's now one year old.    He started out looking like this: A wee little thing, who liked to snuggle on my shoulder and fall asleep there.  The teddy bear toy we had bought for him was as big as he was.  He howled for almost a week when we put him in his crate at night....Jake used to come into my room begging us to let him out because "it hurts my heart to hear him cry like that, Mom".  We didn't give in, and h...

My eldest urchin will start Junior high school next week. That makes me feel pretty damn old.  I've never really paid much attention to my physical age; it's always been about how old I feel rather than how old I actually am...but having a child in junior HS makes it hard to ignore. It seems like just yesterday I was pregnant with her and was considering calling her Nirvana (yes, I really did toy with the idea for most of my pregnancy).  Now here she is wearing a bra and getting ...

*this is rant.  it's only a rant.   if you don't like rants, or don't want to listen to my ranting, you should go away now* I'm so sick of hearing that annoying 'you can be anything you want to be if you just try hard enough' phrase being touted around. It's simply not true.  If a person has an IQ of 77 they're hardly likely to become a neurosurgeon, now are they?  It has nothing to do with trying hard, it's more a question of simply not being physically or mentall...