Wednesday, after another blizzard and before the next

Can you tell I am tired of continuous snow?

Monday into Tuesday we got at least a foot of snow at our house. The back deck was impressive with the snow piled up 1.5 feet and drifting up past the window sills. Taciturn dug out the driveway, the front porch and to the back door on the deck for a total of three hours yesterday afternoon.

Another storm is headed our way on Friday. My much anticipated Container Gardening class (only way I can garden; I live on an acre lot but it is on an 8% grade with herds of deer tramping through almost continuously) was scheduled for this Saturday. It has been postponed until May 2nd. Grumble.

Saturday T and I went to the Black Hills Builders Home Show. In the past, we've always enjoyed this show but this year it was like, "Ok, let's go simply because we go every year." We ran into every person we never wanted to run into again. Especially I ran into a former friend and her husband.

This is one of two people who are officially "former friends." The other one joined a Willow Creek based church and became viciously anti-everything; I called her on it and she said we could no longer be friends, and oh btw I must not be a Christian. I'm just glad she isn't God. The woman I saw Saturday is the only friend I have ever felt like I was divorcing. It happened when the blinders came off and I saw that she just needed someone to boss around and I was that person. We really had little in common. I realized those two things when she and her husband, temporarily homeless through circumstance, came to stay with me when T was stationed in Korea. Oh, btw, her husband had at one time been T's boss.

Suddenly they were my parents and I was the teenaged daughter. They didn't like how my furniture was arranged so they re-did it. They would watch my only TV and invite me to watch it with them. They screened my phone calls. They terrorized my elderly cat. They portioned out my food as they thought I ate too much (I lost a good bit of weight while they were with me, and they said it was due to them teaching me how to eat properly). And she criticized my going to church. I was too educated to believe in air.

There were other things too. After three months (one of which I was in Korea with T), I came home from an errand to find some more stuff rearranged. I said that I preferred it the regular way. My friend drew herself to her full height and asked, "May I ask why?"

"Because this is my house and that is how I like it," I snapped.

She jerked back as if I'd slapped her. "Well!" she said. I heard her a couple of days later on the phone telling someone that she was still awaiting her apology.

My thought was that if she wanted me to apologize for wanting things my way in my house, she would be waiting a very, very long time.

They moved out into the house of another friend that weekend.

And that was that. And that was four years ago.

You must understand that I loved this friend so much that I was unsure that I had done the right thing. I even went to my priest to talk to him about it. He had heard me complain about her for months; he was astonished that I needed to ask! I don't remember exactly what he said but it was on the order of "What took you so long?"

I was incredibly angry and told everyone I knew all that she had done to me. Sounds like what people do when they are divorcing, doesn't it? I regret that I had spread the news, so to speak. But I did. Then we moved away to Washington DC.

Fast forward to Saturday. The guys, who had been friends themselves (I thought), were chatting like crazy (my biggest regret of all of this was that the guys had to side with their wives). As she and I chatted, I mentioned in the course of something else I wanted to tell her that I had been to seminary for a year--her smile turned brittle and she cut me off. The goal of what I was saying was not to brag about being to seminary but to tell her about a serendipitous thing involving one of my seminary pals. But she heard "seminary" and that was all, for her.

The guys exchanged phone numbers. But I bet we don't hear from them. T said later that he never thought of my friend's husband as his friend; he was his boss, nothing more. So they won't hear from us, either.

Sometimes things really suck, don't they?

Journaling

I actually sat down and wrote FOUR (yes, four) pages in my previously untouched journal this afternoon.

Thanks to Ruth and to Diane. Ruth for mentioning on several occasions The Artist's Way, which I need to take but urges the discipline of writing three pages a day to get into the habit of daily writing (from what I understand). Thanks to Diane for turning me onto Bill Holm. Today I simply could not hold back and wrote and wrote, then put the journal down and picked it up again, just to write more.

You have no idea how huge this is. I've not written anywhere except on this blog, which is edited for an audience, for three years. I journaled daily when I took a seminary class taught by Kathy Staudt called Spiritual Writing. I took my journal with me everywhere and wrote about lots of stuff, including a day spent at the VA hospital in Washington DC and the bus ride to get there. Also, during that time, I wrote a short story about a situation that the military put several of us in that was not complementary of the supposedly supportive military "that takes care of its own." My story's response was BULLSHIT! We took care of each other and forgot the military.

At the end of the class, though, T came home from his deployment in support of GWB's War on Terror and the writing stopped.

Hmmm.

Of course as soon as I sat down to write, T came downstairs and started talking to me. He'd been napping for an hour. I still got out 4 pages. I have to make the decision that I will not let him distract me, and set limits. I had to do that during the year I was in seminary and will have to do that now.

Hang with me, brothers and sisters.

What I've been trying to tell you

About religion and the military can be found here.

Occasionally when I've tried to attest to the same information that is found in the article, I am accused of "sour grapes" or of being embittered. Or, people simply do not believe me. But it is so.

We have to get the theocrats out of office this year.

That Time of Year, and IEDs

Changes of command, retirement ceremonies, farewell parties... Part of military life, especially in the summer. We are going to many retirement ceremonies, as we are at that stage of career at which our friends are transitioning to civilian life. This year, we are doing it ourselves.

Taciturn has been a military doctor for 21 years. Like most military physicians, his medical school (St. Louis University) was financed by the government, with the proviso that he serve the military for 4 years after residency. Most physicians leave at that point, which Taciturn planned to do as well, but after a few job interviews in which he wondered about the integrity of the interviewers followed by a tempting job offer to go to Alaska for a few years--he ended up staying. Then he moved to his next assignment, where we met and married. During that assignment, someone recognized leadership potential in him and gave him a big job, and the rest is history.

This ride was actually pretty fun until he was promoted to his last rank. We have been separated more than half of the last few years due to involuntary assignments and deployments. The job he has now is a meat grinder. He goes in every day of the week, day in and day out. He cannot take vacation, he can't go out to eat at night. He is on call 24/7. And, had he not decided to retire, back to the sandbox he would have gone, this very month.

BUT! This is the reality of the new military. While everyone else goes shopping, as our president asked them to do, the entire military works killer schedules just like my husband. My nephew is an army infantryman in Baghdad. My heart stops whenever I hear of army personnel killed there. He already has been in an IED explosion. He works 3 weeks on, two days off, then repeat. It just sucks. Many, many families have broken up due to all of this. One can only live like this for so long.

So, my husband said so long. He has no clue what he will do, but after working non stop for several years, he plans to rest for many months. I think he has earned it.