Watchin "Wonder Pets" with Braeden. Saddened by the news of an earthquake that hit Chile early this morning, that theyre saying may now cause a tsunami, and that just means more destruction :(
I hate to hear that Jordan is miserable. I remember something that our lamaze teacher told us about dealing with labor. She said that the thought of labor freaks people out b/c all they think about is how long it could last, so they are thinking they could be in labor for 24 or 48 hours ! She said to put that out of our minds and just take it 1 contraction at a time and then it would seem much more bearable, since then it means thinking about it one minute at a time. Comparing 24-48 hours to a year is a stretch, but i think then it just comes down to taking it one day a time. As hard as it is not to think of the very depressing, larger picture of being in Afghanistan for a year, try as hard as possible to take it one day at a time... We love you !
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Friday, February 26, 2010
Disenchanted
I've been sleeping all day trying to get myself onto a rest cycle for night shift. Mostly it hasn't worked and I've just tossed and turned all day so tonight's going to be rough. Today for some reason I'm feeling very disenchanted with this whole deployment. The unit I'm assigned to is responsible for a detention facility (fancy term for prison) and since I'm not an MP (Military Policeman) I got pulled along under my original MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) which was Logistics. Because Logistics has a broad scope I've gotten stuck in the mess section on this trip procuring rations. Needless to say I have a hard time justifying a year out of my life spent in Afghanistan where Soldiers are actually fighting and contributing to the overall effort, while I sit in some cave of an awesom counting cans of peas. Honestly, though, sitting in an office is better than working inside the facility. Sometimes this just seems like a no-win situation. My outlook will be better with a new day, but right now I'm just aggravated.
Anyway, tonight I'll go on shift at 7 and do some last-minute training to help us prepare for our Mobilization Readiness exercise which validates us to deploy. It's going to be mind-numbingly boring at best, but I guess it beats sitting around doing nothing. What I wouldn't give for a group of friends and family around a camp fire with some good music and good beer.
Anyway, tonight I'll go on shift at 7 and do some last-minute training to help us prepare for our Mobilization Readiness exercise which validates us to deploy. It's going to be mind-numbingly boring at best, but I guess it beats sitting around doing nothing. What I wouldn't give for a group of friends and family around a camp fire with some good music and good beer.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Youre right Jordan, mothers are incredible ! And we are so lucky to know that not because we heard it somewhere, but because we were shown it everyday of our lives. To have an amazing mother is something we may take for granted sometimes, but it is truly a blessing. I hope to be that for Braeden and you will be one day for your baby ! :)
Strength..
First of all, thank you Jordan for getting a picture up here ! If im not mistaken this picture is from a simpler time, when im pretty sure the most serious thing either one of us was thinking about was what to drink that night !!! hahaha
Jordan, if you were here, I would love you enough to get your next beer ! Only we'd be sitting on a patio covered with snow, which could actually come in handy because we could chill the beers right next to us and save the trip to the fridge !
According to Websters Dictionary, strength is : The quality or state of being strong; ability to do or bear; capacity for exertion or endurance, whether physical, intellectual, or moral; force; vigor; power, as, strength of body, or of the arm; strength of mind, of memory, or of judgement.
Dictionary definitions are great ! To me, the most amazing strength is mental and emotional because i believe that if you posess that, you can will your body to do almost anything. As i read Jordans post about the pepper spray "craziness", i am reminded yet again how strong she is. She was able to get through the physical pain, but it is really just part of the larger picture, and her incredible emotional and mental strength. She is away from all family and friends, getting ready to embark on her thrid deployment, being sprayed in the face with pepper spray and can still say that she truly enjoyed the teamwork and comraderie !!
And, on the physical pain alone, i gave birth to a 10 lb baby and i would choose that again anyday over being sprayed in the face with pepper spray ! So, heres to you Jordan, an incredibly strong woman in both body and mind !
Jordan, if you were here, I would love you enough to get your next beer ! Only we'd be sitting on a patio covered with snow, which could actually come in handy because we could chill the beers right next to us and save the trip to the fridge !
According to Websters Dictionary, strength is : The quality or state of being strong; ability to do or bear; capacity for exertion or endurance, whether physical, intellectual, or moral; force; vigor; power, as, strength of body, or of the arm; strength of mind, of memory, or of judgement.
Dictionary definitions are great ! To me, the most amazing strength is mental and emotional because i believe that if you posess that, you can will your body to do almost anything. As i read Jordans post about the pepper spray "craziness", i am reminded yet again how strong she is. She was able to get through the physical pain, but it is really just part of the larger picture, and her incredible emotional and mental strength. She is away from all family and friends, getting ready to embark on her thrid deployment, being sprayed in the face with pepper spray and can still say that she truly enjoyed the teamwork and comraderie !!
And, on the physical pain alone, i gave birth to a 10 lb baby and i would choose that again anyday over being sprayed in the face with pepper spray ! So, heres to you Jordan, an incredibly strong woman in both body and mind !
Monday, February 22, 2010
Ohhhhhhhhhh shit, OC...
Ok. So obviously I was nervous about going out there to get that OC certification, but if I had had any idea how incredibly, overwhelmingly, mind-numbingly painful it was going to be I honestly don't know if I could have done it.
We started out with a brief explanation of what was expected:
1. You take a several second spray of OC across the forehead and eye area from about 5 feet away.
2. You shake off the excess, take a few steps forward and then have to open your eyes for the instructor. I felt like a million little tiny knives were stabbing my eyeballs...the instructor kept telling me to open my eyes so I could acquire my attacker, but I literally couldn't force my eyelids to move.
3. You have to utilize your riot baton to take down an attacker, giving him commands the entire time, and put cuffs on him. Seriously??? If I hadn't had that instructor there pushing me along there is no way I would have been able to think clearly enough to instruct the attacker to turn his head away and cross his ankles.
4. You have to stand up, open your eyes, and move to the next attacker. At this station you will use your baton to laterally strike the opponent while telling him to "get back" for approximately 15 seconds. 15 seconds?!?!? I felt like I was swinging that baton with all the strength I could muster for about 5 minutes! I could only open my eyes to a tiny slit for a split second at a time and at some point I stopped being able to catch my breath so the "get back" went out the window.
5. You stop striking, open your eyes wide again for the instructor, and move to the 3rd station where you will use the baton in a jabbing motion front and rear to repel two attackers. At this point I can't even remember what was going through my mind except the fact that I wanted to curl up in the fetal position and cry for my mommy. The best part about this station was the fact that in order to see the attackers to your front and rear you had to actually LOOK for them.
6. The fourth station is an attacker trying to hit you while you use your baton to block from all directions. Here my brilliant plan was to just stick my arms out there and hope for the best...not so much. The dude gets instructed to straight up nail you if you don't open your eyes to look at him. So on top of the fact that my face and eyes felt like they were under a blow torch I'm getting knocked around by this damn pad that looks like a punching bag. Just to paint a little picture for you - at this time I have tears streaming down my face, my hair is all over the place, and I have snot and spit running off my chin - how sexy is that??
7. The 5th and final station is a partner-assisted takedown of one last attacker, and then you will be escorted to the decontamination site. What they don't tell you here is that you have to WAIT for your partner to finish on the other lane. Well my partner was some chick who couldn't function at all. I started trying to motivate her to get up there but in reality I was probably just screaming at this poor girl who was already in pain. We took the guy down and I started screaming commands at the attacker which were apparently quite forceful because the instructors came up to me later and said that when I started telling the guy what to do it scared them a little bit. What can I say? I thought that yelling really loud would make some of the pain go away.
From there an escort guided me by the sound of his voice because I could only open my eyes enough to get the faint outline of a shadow in front of my. He took me to the decon station which was some PVC piping with water running out of drilled holes with which we were supposed to rinse our eyes and face. When that ice-cold water hit my face I became literally paralyzed and unable to breath. So I took a step back and a deep breath and tried to stay calm. A couple of seconds later I put my face back in the water thinking the shock would have passed - I was WRONG. Every time I started to rinse off for the next couple of minutes I went through that same second of panic while I tried to make my lungs work. Eventually I was guided around the side of a building to wait out some of the effects. Allow me to clear up at this point that the water does NOT stop the burning, it simply rinses off any risidual pepper spray on your skin. I couldn't function to walk or move at all and in spite of several people instructing me to do so I couldn't quite blink my eyes to get the tears flowing. I finally just kind of fell down to my hands and knees in a weird yoga-type pose and forced myself to control my breathing and wrench my eyes open. In probably about 5 minutes the pain in my eyes started to subside but the absolute raw, horrible, blistering heat on my face seemed to be getting worse. The wind was picking up and when I could get it on my face it felt amazing so I just started to pace as much as I could.
At this point I could finally speak again and almost breath out of my nose and as soldiers do, we started sharing our stories. Everyone was just beyond miserable, but we still managed to offer eachother some encouragement and little tips that had worked to ease the pain. My company commander, CPT Hancher, had gone through first and had completed the lane VOLUNTARILY (because true leaders lead by example, not by command). For some reason it was soothing to me for him to be around...he's normally a pretty quiet man, but it was nice to have at least a couple of people who weren't coughing and gagging and crying. He was the first person to ask how I felt - to which I replied "not good, sir, not f-ing good," and he laughed. Slowly but surely the rest of our 200-person company made it through the lane and staggered spitting and cursing into the decon area. As our own pain diminished and we regained some normal function we started to help eachother. Sometimes just to offer a few words of congratulations or a pat on the back, sometimes as much as putting someone's hand on my shoulder because they couldn't see to walk or helping them blow their nose. The first 15 minutes or so were the worst, but it probably took 2 hours for the pain level to fall below a 5. As I said before, even more then 3 hours later I'm still in a fair amount discomfort. We all are. I would say that my reaction was probably in the most controlled third of reactions overall, the middle third took a little longer to be able to open their eyes or had more trouble controlling their breathing after the decon process started, and the bottom third were just hysterical - screaming and crying and hitting walls.
Like I said, I don't ever, EVER want to go through that again, but I'm glad I had the experience mostly because there was a wonderful time of bonding with and supporting eachother through the pain. Right now, though, instead of sitting in my tent with the 12 women I currently live with I would so much rather be at home. I'd give anything to be sitting in a comfortable chair on the patio with a cold beer in my hand and someone who loved me enough to bring me the next one! I'm thoroughly exhausted right now which I guess is normal considering the adrenaline dump that must have happened while my body was fighting to deal with that pain. It's when I feel like this that I most wish I could trade with Michele and have a loving husband and beautiful baby and comfortable home to look forward to at the end of the day. But really I'd just settle for a good long hug!
For the rest of the evening we're pretty much off. I'll walk to the chow hall in a little while and then brave the shower (the water is going to reactivate any leftover residue from the pepper spray). Tomorrow morning at 6 we'll start the next training rotation, but right now I have no idea what that will be.
~Jordan
We started out with a brief explanation of what was expected:
1. You take a several second spray of OC across the forehead and eye area from about 5 feet away.
2. You shake off the excess, take a few steps forward and then have to open your eyes for the instructor. I felt like a million little tiny knives were stabbing my eyeballs...the instructor kept telling me to open my eyes so I could acquire my attacker, but I literally couldn't force my eyelids to move.
3. You have to utilize your riot baton to take down an attacker, giving him commands the entire time, and put cuffs on him. Seriously??? If I hadn't had that instructor there pushing me along there is no way I would have been able to think clearly enough to instruct the attacker to turn his head away and cross his ankles.
4. You have to stand up, open your eyes, and move to the next attacker. At this station you will use your baton to laterally strike the opponent while telling him to "get back" for approximately 15 seconds. 15 seconds?!?!? I felt like I was swinging that baton with all the strength I could muster for about 5 minutes! I could only open my eyes to a tiny slit for a split second at a time and at some point I stopped being able to catch my breath so the "get back" went out the window.
5. You stop striking, open your eyes wide again for the instructor, and move to the 3rd station where you will use the baton in a jabbing motion front and rear to repel two attackers. At this point I can't even remember what was going through my mind except the fact that I wanted to curl up in the fetal position and cry for my mommy. The best part about this station was the fact that in order to see the attackers to your front and rear you had to actually LOOK for them.
6. The fourth station is an attacker trying to hit you while you use your baton to block from all directions. Here my brilliant plan was to just stick my arms out there and hope for the best...not so much. The dude gets instructed to straight up nail you if you don't open your eyes to look at him. So on top of the fact that my face and eyes felt like they were under a blow torch I'm getting knocked around by this damn pad that looks like a punching bag. Just to paint a little picture for you - at this time I have tears streaming down my face, my hair is all over the place, and I have snot and spit running off my chin - how sexy is that??
7. The 5th and final station is a partner-assisted takedown of one last attacker, and then you will be escorted to the decontamination site. What they don't tell you here is that you have to WAIT for your partner to finish on the other lane. Well my partner was some chick who couldn't function at all. I started trying to motivate her to get up there but in reality I was probably just screaming at this poor girl who was already in pain. We took the guy down and I started screaming commands at the attacker which were apparently quite forceful because the instructors came up to me later and said that when I started telling the guy what to do it scared them a little bit. What can I say? I thought that yelling really loud would make some of the pain go away.
From there an escort guided me by the sound of his voice because I could only open my eyes enough to get the faint outline of a shadow in front of my. He took me to the decon station which was some PVC piping with water running out of drilled holes with which we were supposed to rinse our eyes and face. When that ice-cold water hit my face I became literally paralyzed and unable to breath. So I took a step back and a deep breath and tried to stay calm. A couple of seconds later I put my face back in the water thinking the shock would have passed - I was WRONG. Every time I started to rinse off for the next couple of minutes I went through that same second of panic while I tried to make my lungs work. Eventually I was guided around the side of a building to wait out some of the effects. Allow me to clear up at this point that the water does NOT stop the burning, it simply rinses off any risidual pepper spray on your skin. I couldn't function to walk or move at all and in spite of several people instructing me to do so I couldn't quite blink my eyes to get the tears flowing. I finally just kind of fell down to my hands and knees in a weird yoga-type pose and forced myself to control my breathing and wrench my eyes open. In probably about 5 minutes the pain in my eyes started to subside but the absolute raw, horrible, blistering heat on my face seemed to be getting worse. The wind was picking up and when I could get it on my face it felt amazing so I just started to pace as much as I could.
At this point I could finally speak again and almost breath out of my nose and as soldiers do, we started sharing our stories. Everyone was just beyond miserable, but we still managed to offer eachother some encouragement and little tips that had worked to ease the pain. My company commander, CPT Hancher, had gone through first and had completed the lane VOLUNTARILY (because true leaders lead by example, not by command). For some reason it was soothing to me for him to be around...he's normally a pretty quiet man, but it was nice to have at least a couple of people who weren't coughing and gagging and crying. He was the first person to ask how I felt - to which I replied "not good, sir, not f-ing good," and he laughed. Slowly but surely the rest of our 200-person company made it through the lane and staggered spitting and cursing into the decon area. As our own pain diminished and we regained some normal function we started to help eachother. Sometimes just to offer a few words of congratulations or a pat on the back, sometimes as much as putting someone's hand on my shoulder because they couldn't see to walk or helping them blow their nose. The first 15 minutes or so were the worst, but it probably took 2 hours for the pain level to fall below a 5. As I said before, even more then 3 hours later I'm still in a fair amount discomfort. We all are. I would say that my reaction was probably in the most controlled third of reactions overall, the middle third took a little longer to be able to open their eyes or had more trouble controlling their breathing after the decon process started, and the bottom third were just hysterical - screaming and crying and hitting walls.
Like I said, I don't ever, EVER want to go through that again, but I'm glad I had the experience mostly because there was a wonderful time of bonding with and supporting eachother through the pain. Right now, though, instead of sitting in my tent with the 12 women I currently live with I would so much rather be at home. I'd give anything to be sitting in a comfortable chair on the patio with a cold beer in my hand and someone who loved me enough to bring me the next one! I'm thoroughly exhausted right now which I guess is normal considering the adrenaline dump that must have happened while my body was fighting to deal with that pain. It's when I feel like this that I most wish I could trade with Michele and have a loving husband and beautiful baby and comfortable home to look forward to at the end of the day. But really I'd just settle for a good long hug!
For the rest of the evening we're pretty much off. I'll walk to the chow hall in a little while and then brave the shower (the water is going to reactivate any leftover residue from the pepper spray). Tomorrow morning at 6 we'll start the next training rotation, but right now I have no idea what that will be.
~Jordan
Oh some OC...
I only have a few minutes for a post, but I wanted to kick off my participation. As Michele said, I'm training for my third deployment out at Ft. Bliss, TX. For the past two days we've been doing Unarmed Self-Defense Tactics, knife defense tactics, and permeter security exercises which include incoming "mortars" and simulated casualties. This afternoon, though, there will be no simulation. Here in about 5 minutes I have to go to the Oleoresin Capsicum Spray lane. Think pepper spray, the stuff cops use. Because it is a less-than-lethal method of controlling enemy combatants and detainees, we keep it in our little bag of tricks. But in order to be certified to use it we have to first be able to get sprayed in the face and then fight our way through 5 different levels of attackers. Needless to say I'm NOT excited...I'll try to get on later tonight and let you know how it went. Wish me luck!!
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Gettin it started..
Its a beautiful, chilly Sunday morning here in NJ. I am drinkin my coffee and watching my beautiful boy entertain himself in his exersaucer. My day will probably include a trip to the gym, some laundry, possibly some quality time with Bobby (husband) and Braeden (son). But on a military base "somewhere in New Mexico", life on this Sunday will be quite different im sure. My cousin is preparing for her third deployment to the war-torn middle east. We are similar in so many ways, both women in our twenties who love our family with every ounce of our being. We are both very sociable, always enjoying good friends and a good time ! We both spent time away at college, together ! But for the next year, our lives will be drastically different. For me, my primary role will be mother and for Jordan, her primary role will be soldier, two drastically different things. So, here begins our journey.
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