A Most Excellent Day Off

I don't get to sleep-in ever since I started doing the choir here. Church is at 10 and I like to get there early to warm-up my voice. I usually wake up around 8:30 but not being able to sleep in doesn't bother me. It's better than waking up at 7:30, which is my normal wake up call the other 6 days of the week. Plus, it is a good way to start my day. Sleeping in is nice, but usually leaves me feeling very lazy and unmotivated to do anything. After church today, I walked to the PX and bought some frozen meals to heat up in my room and a few other odds and ends. Then, I cleaned my side of the Chu. I vacuumed and re-organized and put up new air fresheners. 
Then I spent a few hours and went over the 60 something cards I got from Mrs. Haskins 7th grade class. Matt goes to church with her, and apparently she was very touched by our story and had all her students send me cards. I loved it. I loved reading every single one of them. So I wrote them back and I answered the questions that some of them asked me. I'm waiting to send all the note until I buy my camera next month. I'd love to include pictures of where I work, what my Chu looks like and so on.... Yes, I know. They need to be put on here and on facebook. I promise, I as soon as I get that camera I'll be putting all kinds of pictures up!  
I finally broke open the Masterpiece Theatre version of Pride and Prejudice. I'm loving it. I'm trying to only watch a little bit at a time, but its hard to pace myself. 


So a lot of exciting things are happening for Matt in LA. Like, SUPER exciting things. He's signed with two agents. One will represent him for Commercial jobs only, the other will represent him for Film and Television. He has an audition for Groundlings, which is a very reputable improv school/performing arts center thing that a ton of SNL veterans have gone through. So if he can put that training on his resume, it's going to look very good. He's also made a lot of big connections with important people and everything seems to be going so smooth, I couldn't be happier. But I'm curious what God has in store. More than anything, we both want to end up back in Cincinnati. We would be just fine living close to our families with Matt working at one of the sites for Crossroads, or something like that. Sometimes, I think that LA is too glamorous and too far away from everything that I've ever known and every one that I love. The prospect of Matt making a lot of money in LA doesn't outweigh the homesickness for Cincinnati/Louisville. On the other hand, I do love a good adventure. And anywhere Matt is, that is home.


OH! One more thing. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DAD!  Yep, its my dads 52 birthday! He might be half a century old + 2 years, but he's a kid at heart! LOVE YOU DAD! 

He's the one cheesin' next to me! And those are my grandparents, who are in their 70's and looking just as fabulous as ever. The Earley's age well :) 

I Laughed and Cried for 30 Minutes.

Because Matts care package finally came. And when it did I found the BEST and most AMAZING gift in there from my friends and family. I can honestly say that this DVD of the people I love, was the most touching, most effective, most special thing I could have received on my birthday. I can't even express my gratitude for having such crafty, loving people in my life. I am SO blessed. I am blessed to have family and friends that love me so much. So here are my thanks you's in no particular order/from what I can remember in my head. 


To my family: I love how how stupid and hysterical we are. I miss it so much. I love that we can all get together and laugh and talk no matter how long it has been since we have all seen each other. I am so blessed to have such amazing grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers, sisters and a soon to be niece! 
To my other family: Michelle, Mark, and Grandma, thank you for always being their for me. From the day Matt and I started dating, you treated me like your daughter and welcomed me with open arms. I am so grateful for that. It is no problem considering you all my family because its been this way for a little over two years now :) 
To Jamie (and Jack the Cat): Thank you SO much for leaving me a message. I can't wait to get home either because me, you, and Whitney are going to do some major shopping therapy AND I can't wait to talk with you about make-up for the wedding! 
To Whitney: First of all, I'm in love with your voice and the fact that I'm pretty sure you did my birthday song to the tune of  "I want a hippopotamus for Christmas." That's awesome. Second of all, on the way to shopping therapy, we're going to have to bust out some more Celine Dion, Glee and 80's rock ballads. 
To Laura (and everyone in the room at SETC): Thank you for the most solemn and then breathless birthday wishes ever! You made me smile and then miss you like crazy!  
To Hannah: "And maybe when you get home, you can get pregnant too and get super fat cause its super fun." I already posted this on your facebook, but it needed to be on here as well because I really did almost fall off my bed and I also laughed so hard my room mate couldn't tell if I was laughing, crying, or choking... PS: I hope I look as great as you when I get pregnant. 
To Sheridan and Adam: Thank you for the birthday wishes! I can't wait to get out to California and see you all again! 
To Melissa and Shelbi: Technology fail big time, but I still love and miss you guys like crazy. I'm not sure what happened with your video, but I could tell you were excited to tell me Happy Birthday! 
To Andrew Maloney: Thank you for wishing me happy birthday in Times Square in New York City. It didn't make me jealous. At all. Nope. Not. at. all.... okay maybe a little bit. 
To Chris Downy: This song is probably what is going to make you famous... just saying. But seriously, I loved it. I also love that Meghan had a Zelda themed happy birthday video as well. This means the Zelda Posse is alive in all of us to this day. PS: You're awesome and I miss you and I really hope you'll be able to make it to the wedding so Matt and I don't have to wait until 2016 to get married. 
To Roderick: You always make me smile. I miss you and love you! 
To Andrea: Your message was simple and sweet and I really appreciate you taking the time to wish me a happy birthday while you're busy in South Africa! Seriously, it means a lot and I hope the next few days you have in SA are blessed and filled with beautiful memories. 
To Meghan and the Gorons and Link and Navi: hahahahahahahahahaHA! Your message was perfect. I can't even handle it. I wish you would video blog more adventures of you in Hyrule. You have always been SO clever and artsy and so freakin' cute I can't stand it. I love you and miss you more than I can possibly say. PS: New Zelda coming out at the end of this year... I demand an entire day 
devoted to playing it. 
To Emma: Oh my heck, I miss your craziness. You make me laugh without even trying. I miss you so much! 
Nic and Austin: Nic, I appreciate your resourcefulness in communicating happy birthday to me. Austin, I didn't hear YOUR phone explaining why you couldn't talk... mhm. Haha, but seriously, I love you both and I hope the both of you are doing great! 
To Fatty Matty G: You're a douche. Kthxbye. Haha, just kidding, but seriously. That was a mean trick you played on me... I really thought you had booked a flight to Iraq to come see me :( Maybe in a few months?! I miss you and love you, and in the future, we'll be spending time in LA together! 
To The Huddle and Andy Pipkin: It's nice to finally put names with faces! Thank you for the great birthday song and I hope to be meeting you all not to long from now!  


Well I think that's everyone. Oh wait. One more. 
To The Most Wonderful Man In the World: 
Words can't truly express how much I love you. Thank you for putting this together for me. I know you were stressing out about it, but everything ended up perfectly. Everything you do for me only shows me how much you love me and I know I'm the the most blessed girl in the world to have a husband as devoted and loving. Thank you. I love you! 


If I did forget someone, PLEASE let me know. I went through the video and I'm pretty sure I hit everyone, but if I forgot someone I want to know! I Love you all so very much! GOD BLESS! 

The Civil Wars

This music duo is my new obsession. They are EVERYTHING I love about music. Their harmony through out their CD is perfect. It swells and gives and takes at all the right moments. Their music is so raw and passionate, and their voices reflect the same. It's very folksy sounding, but at the same time, very modern. The first time I heard of them was actually a year ago. I was watching Grays Anatomy and I barely made out the song playing in the background, and despite what was happening on Grays, I was more interested in hearing this song looming behind the action. So I googled EVERYWHERE. I finally found that episode of Grays on Hulu, and rewound that scene until I could pick up some lyrics and then googled those. Found it :) The song was 'Poison and Wine' and it was their only single out from what I could tell. I listened to it to death, every so often checking gomusicnow to see if their CD was out. And finally, I found it the other day. They had just released their CD in its entirety last month. I love every song on it. They remind me of the songs my mom and I would sing in the car when I was a little girl... The Civil Wars are the grown up version of that memory. Matt has declared them his new favorite band as well, so I'm hoping that we'll sing their songs in the car together :)

I'm quite upset that I could see them TWICE this month if I was home, but I'll just have to wait until next time :( Oh well. Everyone should go for me and support this amazing pair of singers.


Anyway, it has been pretty uneventful here. Every day feels very similar to the last, but as long as I stay busy, the time goes by pretty fast. Having a routine helps. It's key to settling in. The connexes finally arrived with all our stuff we put it them back at Hood. I'm FINALLY sleeping with sheets and a blanket. Before, I was using my sleeping bad I was issued, which was annoying. I also have my blow dryer and straightener.... however I was doing just fine without them. There were a few other odds and ends that I had stuffed in my tough-box that I had forgotten about, but the biggest and best item was definitely my bedding. Hurray! Sooo that's pretty much it.

The Punch

I don't get it very often. But sometimes homesickness punches me in the face. When we're here, I think the majority of soldiers just dig deep, settle in and let the months roll by. Once the routine is made and the first weeks have passed, its just one day after another like a long and steady march. But sometimes, your rhythmic steps stumble and you find yourself unsettled and upset.  
There isn't anything going on back home that has me upset. There isn't anything here that is overly stressing me out. I'm eating and working out, I'm performing well at work. It's just good ol' homesickness at its finest. I want things to be normal. I'm envious of the statuses on facebook - "Thank God for the weekend!" "I hate writing this paper!" "Only _ weeks until graduation!" -  You know, the normal status of a person in their 20's. Here it is different. A different atmosphere, a different lingo, a different attitude...  And the only escaping is to talk to friends from home, but they're an even bigger reminder of what I'm missing most. So I'll just breath and pray and be comforted that every second passing is another second closer to home. 
I'll probably wake up tomorrow and be fine. If not tomorrow, then the day after tomorrow. It's hard for me to stay unhappy for long periods at time. I'm generally a happy person, but sometimes - just sometimes, the months ahead feel like years. 

Metamorphosis.

My day morphed from slow and painful to much less painful and AWESOME! It actually started at 1:00 Am, when I should have been sleeping... But I couldn't sleep due to the pain in my back/chest/head as I tried telling myself I didn't have cancer or some unknown disease that was going to find me dead in the morning... yeah my brain was going crazy. So I got April as my battle buddy to walk with me to the TMC. The TMC isn't a Sunday stroll to get to. It 's like 3/4 of a mile. Plus, it was 50 degrees outside and 50 degrees is the new 30 so I'm shaking, hurting, and sleepy. April was too, except minus the hurting. Anyway, I spent from about 1:30-3:00 at the TMC trying to get an answer as to why I'm having chest pain and back pain. I ended up leaving with a shot in my arm of something that would make me fall asleep and Omneprozal for heart burn?? Whatever, I took it and I fell asleep, and woke up the next morning around 11. Initially when I got out of bed, I was mad. The pain was still there, but the answers were not. I hobbled around my CHU trying to get ready for the day while also cleaning up a bit. A little bit later Blair and April knocked on my door to come get me for lunch. I was quiet and drowsy for close to the rest of the day. However, I started noticing that the pain in my chest wasn't as prevalent and the pain in my back wasn't as sharp. By dinner time, I was more awake and I realized that my back hardly hurt at all and my chest pretty much felt fine. My spirits were slightly raised at this point because I got another care package from my mom. Its contents: 4 boxes of my favorite home-made cookies (many of which have already been dispersed on my street in my pod) and a book called, "Heaven Is For Real." I'm VERY excited about reading this book. It's about a little boy who has an out of body experience and gets to see glimpses of heaven as he watches the doctors work on his body. I'm sure I'll be blogging more about this book soon. 
So after a care package and dinner, I was on my way to my first Choir rehearsal. That's right. Camp Taji has a little choir that has gotten together to sing on Sunday. I should add that it is a gospel choir. I am the only Caucasian aaand the only soprano. But that didn't even matter cause everyone was so warm and accepting and just wanted to sing!  So finally, after being away from madrigal choir for four years, I got to sing in a choir again. And it felt so good. I couldn't help thank God the whole time because I've been praying for a chance to sing in a choir. It doesn't matter that most of them are not musically trained. It doesn't matter that we don't use sheet music. All that matters is we get to sing to God and I'm loving it. I'm so glad I have something else to look forward to each week. We practice 3-4 times before the service on Sunday.  I have no problems with this. And by the time we were done singing, I had little to no pain in my back and chest. 

Veil Dilemma

I'm having a problem with choosing a veil. I know what style I want... I'm going with the birdcage veil. I found one that I loved at Couture Closet in LaGrange, but it was $250.00. FOR WHAT?! A piece of freakin' TULLE? Yeah, so thank God for Etsy because there are lots of people on there that enjoy making very beautiful veils... now I need to decide which one I want. So I need all my silent followers to speak up and TELL ME! I'm at a loss... I won't put the dress on here because little Matthew is a little nosey. I'm going to ask him not to look at this particular blog, but I'm not sure that he'll be able to help himself. Even if he does, he won't know which veil I picked until our wedding day, so there! Anyway, here they are! 

Here's the veil I found at Couture Closet. It's the Wendy Veil by Sara Gabriel and its expensive :( 

Here is the Wendy look a like that I would get... My concern is that the Tulle doesn't look as fine as the original :-/ 

Then I found this one! Originally, I didn't think I liked birdcage veils with the netting, but I like this one.

And I really like this one! I wouldn't wear the ornamentation on the top of my head like that though. I would definitely wear it on the side. 

All of these veils come in Ivory so that's good because my wedding dress is Ivory. 

Anyway, let me know what you think! 

Spontaneous pneumo-what?!

Thorax. Spontaneous Pneumothorax. I was told today that I don't have one, which is good. Because if you're a medical person/went through basic CLS training in the army you would know what it is. And if you're googling it right now, you just found out. And if you're too lazy to go look it up, its basically a partially collapsed lung. YIKES! Yeah, so the background story is last night after dinner, I thought I was having some indigestion cause I felt this sharp pain in my ribs, mostly on the right side. I fell asleep with it and woke up to it, but I thought maybe it was hunger pains... but after I ate breakfast the sharp pains were still there and sometimes they would move around to my back. Weird. So I decided to go to the TMC after lunch and see what was up. In the mean time though, of course I googled "reasons for chest pains." I got a lot of stuff about heart attacks, but I knew that wasn't my issue because my heart happens to be situated on the left side of my body and the pain is coming from the right... Then I read about the spontaneous phneumothorax and I was like "woah that could be me!" ... Needless to say I was a little nervous going to the TMC. Of course I got flustered as like eight super bored medics came out of no where to see what was going on with the girl complaining of chest pains. So my face got red as I took off my jacket and still had my sweater on from the morning (Its cold at night here!) and they kept asking about my symptoms while checking my vitals and for some reason I got even more nervous and then my pulse registered at like 120/something and I got even more flustered about that. I felt a hot mess. In fact, I was hot. I was sweating. The doctor even asked me if I'd ever been checked for hyperthyroid. I was thinking, "No... I think all these symptoms are just a series of unfortunate events + the fact that I'm naturally thin." It was a treat. 
So I got my chest X-rayed and they commented on how my bones looked like a 12 year olds but they didn't see anything pneumothoraxish sooo I got the old army prescription of "Drink water, don't do PT and take Ibuprofen." They think maybe I strained some muscles when I was working out... that makes sense cause I've been a gym rat for the past three weeks. However, I have to take a break for 3 or 4 days until this gets better and I'm kind of bummed about it. 
I'm still a little worried though... I was told if I still had the pains after a few days, I should go back. One guy in my unit had a spontaneous pneumothorax a few weeks before we left Ft. Hood and it had gone undiscovered for three weeks until he finally HAD to go to the doctor. And I did take some Ibuprofen. Three to be exact. They did absolutely nothing to help... and I'm concerned that this doesn't feel like muscle pain. It doesn't hurt with the same consistency that muscles hurt when you strain or pull them. It's sharper when I'm walking around and carrying my weapon. I still notice it, but its duller when I'm sitting and it doesn't necessarily hurt every time I move. I guess only time will tell. But if I end up writing my next blog or so in Germany... everyone will know why. 

Oh. Hi, Spontaneous Pneumothorax, I hope to never meet you.