sweet dreams of rhythm and Nyquil

It was bound to happen... after traveling for almost an entire month, I managed to get sick. I started having a stuffy nose halfway through the Western Trip, during my week at home, and during the entire length of my family vacation. Yesterday I was home for literally half an hour when *BLAMMO* I started to have a sore throat, an earache, and general ickiness. I think the cross country traveling has confused my body so much that it's been focusing on figuring out what the fuck is going on instead of warding off disease. Meh. I hopped on cough syrup and a lovely mixture of DayQuil and NyQuil, and now I'm clumsier than ever, and quite entertaining, according to my family. I shared this lovely gem at dinner tonight:

"Know what I just realized? The seagull from The Little Mermaid was named Scuttle and he liked to gossip! Like scuttlebutt!"

I've also decided that "fuck" needs to be made a larger part of my vocabulary on a daily basis. I say it quite a bit, but I'm tired of bottling feelings in, and "fuck" seems to cover the gamut nicely.

Did you know that if someone blocks you on Facebook they can't see your page OR what you've written on a mutual friend's page? I discovered this recently from blocking a certain colorguard instructor from high school, and I couldn't see what he had written on my friend's wall, but I knew he had written something based on the comments from her father that specifically addressed him. Now that I know this, I'm not going to hide as much anymore!

Did you also know that I've made an addition to FoHB? I'll give you a hint. It's proven to be very useful to see where my readers are coming from. So far I've had Columbus, Grand Rapids, Michigan, Vandalia (hmmm... wonder who that is!), and Chicago (this one stumps me a little because I have lots of people who I know in the city). I like it, but I'm still searching for a better version. This has some features I'm not too happy about.

Army Wives tonight really got to me. Wait, I almost forgot! **SPOILER ALERT** (Brenda, I'm looking at you!)











I can't imagine going through the process of someone deploying. One of my previous exes is currently in Afganistan, and I know that his family (at least his brother, who is a Facebook friend of mine) misses him so much. At the same time, if I really loved someone in the military, it would just have to become something that I dealt with. It's not like I've never done a long distance relationship, but usually those haven't been to someplace dangerous. It's weird because part of me is completely against the idea, but part of me knows that I wouldn't be alone in my loneliness, and that I've been through losses already in my life, so what's the worst that could happen? It's their job. There's really no sense in stressing over it. My mom always gets asked if she worries about my dad being shot at, and her philosophy is that if she was going to worry about that, she would waste her entire life. It's a very healthy attitude if you ask me. The simple truth is that people are killed everyday, whether they're soldiers, cops, or civilians.

In any case, I feel like the shit has really started to hit the fan for the ladies of Army Wives. Denise is preggo (yay!), but Frank got deployed before the baby is born, so he's missing out on that AGAIN. Pamela got divorced from Chase, which really makes me so sad, especially since I'm suspicious of him hooking up with his neighbor woman. Technically, he's not in the wrong, but it's still painful for Pamela (boy do I know how she feels). Claudia Joy's life is generally shitty if you ask me. She's lost her oldest daughter, now she has diabetes, her husband's being deployed for the first time since her daughter's death, and her youngest is about to leave for college. Joan's life since the show began has also been lousy. Her husband cheated on her while she was deployed, they worked it out, had a baby, then she got deployed again just a few months after Sara Elizabeth was born. Then she nearly got blown up by an RPG, had tons of shrapnel in her face and almost lost her vision. And now she has TBI as a result of that injury, can't deploy with her unit, and has to spend her time relearning basic things, like sorting out which things you would read and which things you can't. And then there's Roxy. She's always been my least favorite character, but I'm starting to feel bad for her. All she wants is a baby with her husband, and after she miscarried, she's been struggling to conceive, and just when they found a solution, her husband's orders were changed and he found out that he was deploying.

And thanks to warnings on Twitter, I knew that tonight would be a tearjerker. Foolishly, I told myself that it couldn't be that bad, but who am I kidding? I've cried many other times over TV shows, Army Wives included, and I knew that everyone (minus Joan) was deploying. So I held myself together until the absolute very end of the show and as the 23rd is boarding the planes, "Lux Arumque" by Eric Whitacre begins to play in the background as you see all of the families bidding their last farewells. This piece has always held a special place in my heart, simply because it made me love choral music. If you haven't heard it, shame on you, and here's a video:



Apparently the song is actually about the birth of Jesus, but it fits very well in this situation too. Lux means 'light' and in a weird way, it's almost as if the song gives hope to the families and the soldiers. Maybe it's the NyQuil talking, but I think that it wasn't just the beauty of the song that gave the producers the idea to put the song in the show.

Speaking of NyQuil, I'm getting tired, and now I'm listening to "Sleep" which is just making me more relaxed. You write some amazing things, Mr. Whitacre.

~ Christine