The New "Do"

Seth decided he wanted a Mohawk. How often in your life do you get to have a cool haircut like this and get away with it? Not often.... so I said sure!

He came home after school and asked me to make him bald.

Grandma

As some of you may already know, my Grandma passed away in February after a rapid decline. One of the earliest memories I have with Grandma is going for walks through downtown Carthage. Noreen and I would run around the statue in Monument Park a few times. It seemed like she knew everyone in that town, since we were always stopping to say hello.

Since we were babies, Grandma measured our height on the side of her cupboard in the laundry room. Its fun to compare my height at certain ages with my children and see how much bigger they are!

I remember playing hours of Uno, Rummy, Hearts and Up and Down the River with Grandma. She taught me how to play Casino, a few versions of Solitaire, and Michigan Rummy. But she was the Queen of the cards.

Grandma was always a lady, and she tried to teach me the importance of being one too. She made sure that we didn’t slouch, kept our elbows off the table, chewed with our mouths closed, and didn’t blow bubbles with our gum.

Grandma was green before her time, as she always recycled our paper napkins. If our dinner napkins weren’t too soiled after our meals, she’d write our initials on them so we could reuse it for the next day.

Though I never got to see her perform, I know my Grandmother loved being in the theater. She loved to read books, and took us to the library when we visited. She was fond of wine and champagne, and watching soap operas. In the afternoons, I could always find her sitting in her chair in the kitchen watching As The World Turns or Jeopardy and working on a cross-stitch, crossword puzzle, jigsaw puzzle or a crochet or knitting project. Almost every afghan I own was a gift that she made.

Grandma was not the best cook, but she sure made a fantastic blackberry pie. She and Pop took us often to eat at the Sahara where once again they knew just about everybody in there. When I was in basic training at Fort Jackson, she sent me a big box of snickerdoodle cookies for the entire platoon to share. After weeks of Army chow, it was a wonderful treat that perked us all up.

When I was quite young, I remember asking Grandma how old she was…. for which she always responded with a mathematical equation.

I loved going to visit my Grandma. She always had the softest toilet paper in her bathroom, and she always stocked her cupboard with sugar wafer cookies for my sister and I. It was a simple thing to do, but it made me feel very special.

It's Been Forever

Wow, so I realize it's been a REALLY long time since I posted. I have missed it a lot, and I know I have a lot to update about. But I am a procrastinator, and every time I think of all I need to write about and how little time I have to myself I seem to put it off. I realize that I will never have time to be able to rewind and give full detailed accounts of every event in the last 2-3 months, so I am going to give you an abbreviated version, and then move on from there.


Thanksgiving 2008: We went up to 'Lidge Lake and had Thanksimas with my family. My sister and kids came down, Grandma and Great Cousin Joe were in, along with my parents of course. We knew Christmas would be with Dave's family in WV, so we had an early Christmas celebration a few days after Thanksgiving. There was so much snow! It was truly a Winter Wonderland.


Camp McCrady: I left to report for my mobilization on Dec 7th in Columbus, SC. After just a few days there, it was determined that I was not medically fit for deployment (oh shucks) and would be sent home once the paperwork was done being pushed around. On Dec 18th, to my surprise I was told I would be outprocessing the next day and going home for good on that Saturday.... never to return. John was unaffected by my absence and said "Oh Hi Mommy!" ...like 10 minutes after he saw me. Seth still talks now about how sad he was while I was gone. While at Camp McCrady, I was fortunate to be able to visit with my cousin Ann (who lives in Columbus)and my Aunt Kathy (who was visiting my cousin at the time). They took me out to dinner twice, and to a fabulous dessert and coffee place. Yum!


Christmas 08: We drove down to see Dave's family for Christmas. Time spent there is always great. Very busy with lots of people and a huge feast with more food than anyone can eat (even Dave). The boys got to open their presents from us and Santa in the hotel in the morning, and then had more in the afternoon with the rest of the family. Unfortunately we had to leave early Friday morning to get back home since Dave had to work. But it was nice.



New Years 09: Since the boys were still on Christmas Vacation and I didnt' have to work, I decided to take the boys up to visit my sister and their cousins in Vermont for a few days. It was SOOO cold up there but wonderful to see my sis' new house (well, a few years new I just hadn't seen it).



Spring 09: No not the season silly...the semester! Yes, Plain Old Carolyn has embarked on a new adventure back to college. I am taking 14 credit hours this semester and working on knocking out the prerequisites I need to get into the UB School of Nursing. So this semester I am taking Statistics, Anatomy and the Lab, Human Development, Grief Loss and Coping, and Golf. Woo Hoo!



The kiddos: Seth lost his first two teeth, and has officially banned us from kissing him. He made a friend in the neighborhood and it's nice to now see him have some friends outside of school. John turned 2 a few weeks ago and is playing the part. He wants to be so independent and do everything himself.

ABCs

At your service.

An uneventful week this week at Camp McCrady. While waiting on my paperwork I have been tasked as the duty driver, shuffling new arrivals around to appointments, back and forth to Ft. Jackson and off to the airport onto their next destination in a 12ish passenger van. VERY Exciting.

I have my tickets for Sat morning to fly back home for the holidays. If my paperwork has not completed before then, I will have to come back to McCrady on Jan 4th until it is done. I am being told different things in regards to my paperwork so I am taking everything they say with a grain of salt. With only one more day to go, I am skeptical that it will be done in time.

Regardless, I am going home on Saturday. YAY!

Unfit for Duty

In soldier terms, being labeled "unfit for duty" represents something shameful..... unsoldierly....... weak. To them you are useless, maybe even lazy or scared. People who can't pass a physical fitness test or struggle to keep their weight down are "unfit for duty". People who are depressed or suffer from mental illness. We see in the news all the soldiers coming back from Afghanistan without a limb or having had serious injuries and still they want to go back to fight next to their brothers and sisters. They are strong, not weak.

While I never served overseas, this week I was given the red stamp "unfit for duty". I will not be going to Iraq. In a few weeks (hopefully less) I will be going home. After seeing the orthopedic specialist and having several x-rays of my spine, they determined that my scoliosis is significant (much more than I thought! I had never seen the x-rays before!) and participating in activities necessary while overseas could cause further serious injury and chronic pain. Not only am I exempt from this mobilization, but I am now being processed out of the Army altogether. I am done.

I feel very mixed emotions about this. I feel elated that I can stay home (of course!) and can't wait to see my family again. At the latest I'll be home in early January before the Spring semester starts. It is a relief knowing that I can't be called back again, as now the talk of a surge into Afghanistan will surely cause an increase in Inactive Reserve soldiers being mobilized.

On the other hand, I can't help but feel kinda sad too. I loved the Army and my job while I was active. It was intense and exciting. I felt like I did a pretty good job, got promoted, awarded, etc. We were blessed to be assigned to a strategic unit (not tactical). Compared to most others, we had it great.... cushy. Thousands didn't even get to come home from Iraq.

So, I can't help but feel kinda shamed that I am complaining about the little pain in my neck. I understand it is a legitimate issue, but compared to others who have lost their limbs or lives, my little pain seems more like an excuse. An excuse to get out of something I don't want to do. And it worked, but not without casting a shadow on my career as a soldier. And now, something I was very proud of having done will have to be swept under the rug and tucked away.

Soldier

Hello Mudda, Hello Fadda. Here I am at....Camp McCrady.

So... it's been a while since I've posted. A lot has been going on in the past month and I'm sure I'll fill in when I have time.

At the moment I'm here in Camp McCrady, a small little former National Guard post on the corner of Ft. Jackson. I should be here for a few weeks while I finish inprocessing into the Army and then I'll be going down to Goodfellow Air Force Base for a few more weeks of training. My uniforms were all reissued to me today, so now I am officially a soldier again.

So far it has been interesting to be here, as my inprocessing into the Army almost 7 years ago was SO different, and seeing some of these places has brought back major deja vu. I was expecting to arrive here and find hundreds of others in the same boat as I.... recalled involuntarily back for some reason or the other. Instead I find that all BUT 3 of the group of only 16 that arrived on Sunday are retirees who have volunteered to return to active duty in stateside positions for bigger retirement benefits. So of course being retirees, they are all high ranking officers... Colonels, Lt. Colonels and Majors. Of the three of us that were not retirees, one I know volunteered to come back to Active duty from the Inactive Ready Reserves, and the other I don't know about yet. I feel very out of place here, and can't help but feel like this all should be a big misunderstanding....... did I accidentally volunteer for something? I guess I just won the lottery this time? This unit must have needed a linguist, and they drew my name out of the hat?

So, my further lottery luck. Somehow I was chosen by our cadre to be the group leader to keep us all together and make sure everyone gets to where they need to be. Lovely. Normally if I had a bunch of privates I'd just raise my voice or make people sit around and wait. But how does one tell 13 high-ranking officers they can't going anywhere?