And I'd do it all over again.

Play these while you read. The first song (Marry Me - Train) is the inspiration for the image below. The second, (Lucky - Jason Mraz feat. Colbie Caillat) i think summarizes 'us' very nicely. Especially if you listen to the lyrics. The metaphors in the song fit our reality almost perfectly. Plus, it makes me smile every time I listen to it. :)

click image to enlarge if you wish

One year ago today I married my love, my hero, and my best friend.
This year has been crqzy, amazing, scary, empowering, enlightening, wonderful... I could list a million words here but what is most important is that when I look back over the last year, the one word that I think of first and resonates the loudest is most simply - happiness. It's important to note that all of the "bad" emotions are cause by circumstance and not by him. He is absolutely the root of all the good emotions.

I could simply not imagine a more perfect feeling. I have never been this happy. Which makes me SO excited for our future. If we are this amazingly happy now. Hundreds of miles apart, barely any time together, all the stresses and uncertainty - just imagine! Imagine how absolutely perfect it is going to be when we are finally, finally together. It makes me shake with anticipation just thinking about it. It went by so fast, this last year. Here's hoping that the next three and a half go by just as fast.

There have definitely been emotional ups and downs. Scary moments, tough decisions, hard goodbyes, a lot of not knowing, plans changing, plans changing again, and then plans changing again. But the one thing that has been constant throughout it all has been how we feel about each other. We haven't at any point had any doubts, reservations, or fears about us. We've never worried if we made the right decision. I think it's safe to say that the tougher things get, the stronger we get. I love the way we love each other. The way we're able to balance each other.

I could go on forever about all things I love about us and why I think we are so freakin' perfect for each other...

But I will just leave it at this. Knowing everything that we've been through and the emotional rollercoaster we've been on, the frustration, and the uncertainty, missing each other and waiting and anxiousness... I would absolutely, unequivocally, and with out any hesitation do it all over again.

Happy Anniversary to my Love, my Hero, and my Best Friend. I love you with all my heart and look forward to all the scary, crazy, amazing years to come.

Good 'ol Navy Blues

So, there is a lot for this entry, unfortunately the story portion will be a little cut short because its been a while and i cannot remember all of them very well. I have been super super busy since i got back from my underway with the Nebraska. I came back early and for quite a silly reason - which cannot be discussed.

I have been "cranking" the past three weeks which is to say the least... poopy. Let me start by saying that i love the CS (Culinary Specialist or "Cook") division dearly, they are very under appreciated (everyone only complains about the food, and its difficult to please 160 people). However, they have a couple strikes against them... the lower ranking ones are stupid and lazy.

I dont hate it as much as many people warned me i would... but keep in mind, the average CS as 1/3 the asvab score that i do and they like to treat everyone like they are stupid. The reason for this is that almost every other rate advances faster than they do, so when you are "cranking" its the one time they can give you a hard time and not take repercussions for it. Note: I outrank all but 3 of the CS division, and many of them have been there for 4+ years.

Anyways! I spend 8-16 hours a day doing dishes, with no breaks except for eating during which time i wolf my food so i can get back to it, and the occasional "I cannot hold it anymore, I'm dancing in my boots" bathroom break. H0wever, I have received several comments or compliments on the fact that i maintain high spirits.

I constantly refer to myself as "FSA (food service attendant) Extraordinaire". People seem to get a kick out of it. Its ever written on my hat. I stand at the galley entrance when all the dishes are done and with a very very absurdly almost south park, Asian demeanor ask people if they would like a "complimentary back rub while you transit from the line to your seat with your delicious meal". I have also been known to explain that "We are a full service facility offering foot rubs, facials, hugs and the best coffee on under the sea". I guess there are ways to have fun with it.

Anyways, we are getting underway soon, so its a lot of work for the whole boat. I'm just doing the dishes but my division is usually there later than I am because we own so much equipment that is under repair right now. So I guess that when i go back its gonna be more or less the same thing. Minus the dishes. The soap is obliterating my hands. My finger tips are the texture of a Miracle Cloth, and no - that's not an exaggeration.

Stories... Well... Kinda hard having been a month or so since i have been back.... I will recap as well as i can in a semi-kinda bullet point format...

- Ran full speed into a CO2 locker in the engine room while the boat was at a 20 degree up angle during a flooding drill. OUCH!

- Drill went down in my immediate area and i thought "Oh hey! Im not on watch, so i can watch this evolution and take notes... Now, if i were on watch, what would i be doing right now? Oh shit... I AM on watch!"

- Lost my qual-book to find that "Weems" had taped it the roof of Nav Center.

- Watched a silly a-ganger attempt to devour a table spoon of cinnamon. ROFL.

- Drove the boat for the first time during High-Speed Operations with the most irritating Diving officer behind me telling me what to do, under the contract that i wouldn't vary the ship's ordered course by more than 2 degrees. - NOT EASY. But I did it.

I think that's about it, I can elaborate on any of these at any time in person there is a lot more to most of them.

So anyhoozle... Not so much looking forward to this underway, we have a lot of trident fleet testing evolutions going on, which will make it more difficult to get qualified. I am determined to get it done this underway though so that i can get onto college in the next off-crew. Hooyah PACE courses.

On being grownups...

First off I would like to thank "Pop" and "S", for giving us the Dave Ramsey Books. I wish someone had given me this advice about 7 years ago! We are both really excited about putting it into practice. We thought we were doing ok, plugging along with getting stuff paid off, sort of slowly growing a savings, and trying to get into the first house we could afford. Boy were we off! It's a whole new ball game now. It's time for us to start being real grown ups and get our savings on! We're learning about growing an emergency Fund, IRA's, Mutual Funds, Investing, ... you know, grown up stuff.

Today I finally did the paper work to up the money going into my 401k, after learning how compound interest works I realize that a little bit more can make a HUGE difference later! Also, the plans for getting a house are (by recommendation of the star and smiley face) on temporary hold until we pay off ALL of our debt and get some heftier savings going.

So, new plan is, when he gets back from deployment, to get me/us into an apartment, which may seem counter to saving money, but it's much less than a house and realistically most people don't get the luxury of living with their parents until they are 30 just to save money. (I love them, but I need to be a grown up - this means many different things to me - and we need our own space.) So, a side from that, it's save save save time. We're going to start to 'snowball' our debt as soon as he gets back from this next deployment. He'll have a bank full of sea-pay to obliterate his car loan and then we can get onto the other stuff. Seriously, getting rid of two car payments, student loans, and a credit card is going to open up so much cash for us. We're really excited about it. It'll be worth the wait. That's the basic short term plan. Later we'll add investments and all that jazz. Let's at least finish the books first. :)

In other news, this last weekend was quite probably the last time we'll see our Sailor Monkey for a while. He's going out on his first big deployment. There is a teeny tiny little inkling of a chance that hey might be able to come home this weekend, but I'm not hanging my hat on it. It would be nice though, so we can do some kind of something for our anniversary, even if it's a week early. Also, I won't have his gift until this week and I want to give it to him now, rather than in almost 4 months.

He has promised to blog tonight - with stories! But, it's another long long day so I won't blame him if he doesn't. Last night he fell asleep on his phone so he didn't hear when I called. I got to talk to him this morning at about 4am when he got up to go to work and saw that I had called him a few times.

So that's that.
Yea for us being grown ups and starting to build our financial future. :)
Also, gearing up for his deployment. *deep breath*

And if anyone is interested... http://www.daveramsey.com/

*eeeeeerrrrrrrppppppp*!!!!!!!

That's the sound of life coming to a screeching halt...

House search - On hold
Anniversary plans - on hold
Time together - minimal

All stops and waits for the Navy. His deployment has been moved up. So there isn't time to make any decisions on the house front, we won't be able to spend our anniversary together and he doesn't have any full weekends off before he leaves. And possibly he will only have one more day back home.

I am finding that my semper-gumby attitude it waning lately. And positive aspirations about being tough and independent are getting harder to maintain. I hate being a whiner. I know I am not the only one affected by these things. I'm just getting frustrated with all the ups and downs. I need to find the silver linings. He (should) still be home for the holidays. We'll actually be in a better place to get a house later on anyway. (Even though i am in love with the awesomely priced one we found over the weekend.) Uh... yeah that's all i got right now. Guess I'll have to work on that list.

That's all. Just venting i guess. I've been cranky the last couple of days anyway. Maybe next week I'll be in a better mood about it all. Or, something.

What's up...

It's been a while since I've been on here. There hasn't been too much to report. Monkey has been diligently... doing dishes. And getting his quals, and working hard. We don't get to talk as much, his days are really long and busy. He has a few stories which he would write about, but he doesn't have time. And his poor poor hands. From being in hot dish water all day they are super super dry and cracked. He's had to use "heel-tastic" on his hands to make them feel better enough to use.

He actually had this last weekend entirely off but he didn't know until he showed up to work on Saturday morning. So we missed a night but it was fine, all he missed was me being extremely ill. So, Saturday we just chilled while my tummy recovered and then Sunday we looked at a couple condos. Still probably not in the cards yet, but we're getting the pieces together.

Today he's back to work. More dishes and food. I haven't talked to him once today. Only a text saying he got back to Bangor safely.

On a side note, it just about two weeks until we've been married for a year! How time flies! We are so excited. Still trying to figure out what we want to do. That is, if he can get the time off. We don't have a lot to spend right now. We're a little over extended after the 4th and we're trying to put as much as possible into savings right now. Initial thoughts are to go camp in a yurt. :) Suggestions welcome.

Sort of most of a weekend.

It turns out that he kind of gets weekends. I guess how it works is that if they happen have a short duty day fall on a weekend or holiday then they get that day off. So for him that happens to be Saturday and Monday this weekend.

My plan is to go up there tonight so i can spend the day with him Saturday, entertain myself until about 7pm on Sunday, watch some fireworks, then spend most of Monday with him and come back Monday night. It's a little bit broken up and not ideal but it's better than nothing! They've got a mall there, if i sleep in, and take my time getting ready, i could spend most of a day at the mall, right? :)

Show and Tell

Ok, this has absolutely nothing to do with the Navy... unless you count it as the really awesome wedding that I had to go to alone because Monkey was underway. Or that this was the wedding I was leaving when he called me unexpectedly.

Anyway, there was a really cute picture that was taken, but there was this kid walking behind me and it kind of took away from the photo. So, I mustered my graphic design skillz and shopped him out! I just wanted to share. I'm pretty proud of myself. And yes, to the discerning eye there are a few tells, but I didn't spend that much time on it. I just made it good enough for facebook. Uh, and of course, i also airbrushed my face a little. See the before and after below. I love photoshop. :)