Ode to a Neglected Blog

Dear Blog,

I'm sorry I have been ignoring you so much the past few weeks. I know there is not excuse for my actions, but for the sake of defending myself I'm going to make a few anyways.

I find myself ever so busy with work these days, and cleaning, and drinking alcohol. I just haven't had the TIME to pay enough attention to you.

It's not you, it's me.

I'm sorry. But I still love you.

From now on, I'm going to be a better blogger. I'm going to blog you so much you'll be begging me to stop. And then I'll blog some more.

And I want everyone to see us blogging! NO SHAME! The love we share is deep and intimate and I want everyone to know about it.

So, blog, will you take me back? Please? I promise I'll be a good blogger and will try and appreciate you more.

Much Love,

~Laura

P.S. I missed you.

I'm back...with Awards!!!

Once again, my apologies for being a complete blogging stick in the mud this past week. I haven't had a job in 2 years (literally...I've spent the last 2 years just "hanging out") so now that I HAVE a job I'm running around like a chicken with it's head cut off.

If you are a new follower and I haven't followed you back yet, I'M SORRY! I'm getting a wee bit behind on keeping track of things around here. So if you would, just comment on this post and I promise I will go through it tonight and visit everyone's blogs.

Now on to the awards...I was given 3 awards. Firstly, I would like to thank Mel over at Head in the Game. Heart in the sand and Jesseandmarissa at Living the Life of an Infantryman's Wife for the Sweet Blogger Award. Then, I would like to thank Bryceandwhit over at Army Wife for the Versatile Blogger Award!

So, as per the "Versatile Blogger Award" rules, I must list 7 things about myself. So here we go:

1. I am always late. I'm one of those people who tries soooo hard to be on time but is almost always late. Even if I'm "on time" I'm usually the LAST person on time.

2. I'm addicted to vampires. I love vampires, vampire novels, vampire movies, vampire TV shows, vampire clothes, etc etc etc.

3.I have a black thumb. I even managed to kill a cactus once, that's how bad it is.

4. I come home from being out and immediatly change into my pajamas pants. Even if I'm going out again later, I have to change my pants because I simply can't lounge in jeans.

5. I squeeze the tooth paste tube from the middle. It annoys the ever-loving crap out of my husband who is a "roll from the bottom" kind of guy, but I just can't be bothered to do it.

6. I always find myself with way too many limes. Every time I go to the store I end up buying limes, and then I have too many. Needless to say there is a LOT of limeade around here.

7. I should never be allowed to rent from Red Box ever again. I never return the movies soon enough. We now own 3 beautiful redbox DVD's due to my inability to return them.

Now who to give it to...hmm...how about EVERYONE! Yes ok, so part of that is laziness, but I also just simply don't know who to give the awards to! So if you want one, take it! My treat!

Now that that is done, I would just like to say that I promise I will no longer be such a goose about this blog. I WILL come back more often. I PROMISE lol. I don't want to lose my followers from lack of...blogginess.

Circle of Friends Award

Thank you to Gaile at Deployment (again) for this award! I'm so glad I was included in her circle of friends.

The rules of the award are:

1) Post it on your page


2) List five things you looooove to do

3) Pick five friendly bloggers and pass it on!


So, my five things:

1. I LOVE driving my husbands truck. Parking is always a dramatic to-do, but when I'm sitting up in that truck, 7 or so feet off the ground surrounded by a cage of steel, I feel like a badass. I even decorated it:

2. I love accessorizing our apartment. I am madly in love with throw pillows more than anything and area rugs and love switching up the colors, using accents, and overall interior decorating. Everything in our house has to match, and each room has a coordinationg floral arrangement :)

3. I love listening to music in the shower. I'm sure our neighbors are none-too-pleased to hear Taylor Swift and Madonna blasting through the walls at 7 AM, but I don't really care. I can hear them playing Call of Duty all night, so it's only fair they deal with my bathtime tunes. I always just use my iphone with speakers, which means that when I'm in the shower and my husband gets online I will hear the little notification. I never miss chats anymore :)

4. I LOVE black clothing. I guess it's because I've always been a goth at heart, but I love black clothes. Black is my favorite color. When I go shopping I don't even pay attention to colors or prints. I go straight for the black. I find it to be sexy and slimming and it makes me feel confident, so almost all of my clothes are black. Even my finger nails are usually painted black and I only ever wear black underwear too. My home, on the other hand, is always bright with accent flowers and colors, I just love to WEAR black.

5. I love Mexican food. Tacos, tortas, fajitas, burritos, quacamole...I could live on the stuff. And California Mexican food is so much better than Utah Mexican food. It's AMAZING.

So I'm passing this Cirlce of Friends award on to:

Kirsten at Requires Heavy Lifting

Tootie at Tootie's Place

Navywife24 at A Day in the Life of a Navy Wife

Dani at Hard Corps Love

Expat Girl at The Sand is Different Here

Sunshine Blog Award

Wow. So readership of my last post about the care packages almost gave me a heart attack (in a good way). 8 comments is pretty much a record and my blog jumped from like 16 followers to 23 in the span of a few hours. I'm speechless.

Thank you to everyone who read my blog, and thank you for all those compliments you guys gave me on my last post. It means a lot.

Now the real reason for this post is because I've been awarded the Sunshine Blog Award from Cheryl over at Boots in the Doorway and from Kirsten at Requires Heavy Lifting. I feel like I've just left the Oscars :) The Sunshine Award is awarded to bloggers whose positivity and creativity inspires others in the blog world. The rules for accepting this award are:

-Put the logo on your blog or within your post
- Pass the award on to 12 bloggers
- Link the nominees within your post
- Let the nominees know they have receive the award by commenting on their blog
- Share the love and link to the person who gave you the award.

So my list of 12:

Living the Life of an Infantryman's Wife

Forever in Blue Jeans

Deployment (again)

I roll OORAH style

A Day in the Life of Mrs. M

ACU's, Stiletto Shoes, and Pretty Pink Tutus

Ether's Promise

Hard Corps Love

OWH Stars and Stamps  (and you guys should check out what a great thing they have going!)

Shannon Katharine Sullivan

Spiderman & MaryJane

The Sand is Different Here

Last, but not least, a summary of my day: I did a work-out video with a friend. We spent 40 minutes doing the "diggin jiggy"...a testament to the fact that the people who make those videos REALLY need to come up with better names for their made-up dance moves.

New iPhone

So I'm blogging this from my new iPhone. I finally caved and bought one because I wanted to be able be connected to DH even when I'm out and about. I got the Twitter, facebook, and skype apps so I will never miss a call again! I feel so connected to the world. Too bad I don't have a mobile job that requires actually having a life haha.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Blog makeover!

What a feat! I think I have been working almost all day coming up with both a new name and a new design for my blog. But I am finally satisfied!

Well...sorta.

I have been procrastinating on purchasing photoshop for this laptop, meaning I've had to do all of my editing in Paint.NET. Don't get me wrong, PDN is actually quite a groovy program, but I am and always will be a photoshop girl. I worked with photoshop for HOURS at a time back in my photography days and can do pretty much anything on it, so to suddenly jump ship to PDN is a bit confusing. I haggled with that banner for a good portion of the day, trying my hardest to get the edges even (to no luck).

So unless someone would like to clue me in on the secret of using PDN to cut things out of other photos, we're all going to just have to just live with the blotchy, un-clean edges on my banner: a testament to the fact that I slaved on my blog myself rather than paying someone to do it for me.

Which reminds me...I need to upload some photos. This place is looking a little bit un-personalized (is that a word? Unpersonalized?)

Gasp! I made it to 5 followers!

And 1 of them isn't a family member...hahaha!

Sweet.

On another note, we FINALLY got that photo session in after only 3 reschedulings. It felt kinda funny because we were hanging around at the beach and hugging and stuff and having our picture taken and a woman walked by and started fawning over us about our "upcoming marriage". I told her we were already married and these were pre-deployment pictures and she switched instantly into somber patriot mode, lowered her eyes to the ground and said "thank you for your service". DH just looked at me like "why is this stranger talking to us!!!"

The photographers were awesome though. They got some shots in that included his dog tags and combat boots so I'm excited to see how they turn out (hopefully I actually looked remotely photogenic).

Then we took my new handgun to the range. I named him Siegfried because I thought...if I'm going to own a weapon it might as well have a name and Siegfried just popped into my head first. But apparently I can't shoot it worth shit because I shot 50 rounds and missed 90% of them (and I don't mean missed as in I missed my aim...I missed the ENTIRE TARGET). That's pretty strange considering I'm actually a decent shot, but Siegfried behaves differently than other handguns I've used. The trigger takes more effort to pull and you have to pull it back farther, and something about that finger movement forces me to tilt the gun too far down. So hopefully as the weeks go on I'll figure it out.

We also packed his gear today. Boy was that NOT FUN. Well ok...I might have had a little teeny tiny bit of fun slipping love notes into all his skivvy rolls.

I'd say the phase of deployment I'm in now would be....the "Wtf mode". Everything that happens just makes me say "WTF life". Like yesterday and that whole California Tsunami thing. We don't even live near the beach but I had to say WTF because it was like the last week of him being here has just been one thing after another and then a near-natural-disaster to top it off.

Oh and did I mention that our neighbor apologized for being a douche? He picked a terrible time (seeing as I was just returning from a pre-deployment party that I left early because I was about to burst into tears every 5 seconds and I didn't know anybody). But still....as I was getting my depressed little sulking self out of the truck he found a few moments to yell over his balcony that he acted "hastily". I'd say "idiotically" would be more like it, but I'll accept hastily. I also noticed he stopped parking there. Instead his roommate parks there and his car is smaller and he actually knows how to park, so so far the parking situation seems to have improved slightly.

An Ode to Dead Blogs (and Flat Husband!)

Let's just say this is not the first time I have attempted blogging...although it is certainly my most popular attempt (can I have a shout out for 2 whole followers? Woot!)

I've had many dead blogs over the years. Most of them died at the hand of their writer, who never seemed to have time to update them. One of them was killed following an angry tirade about how the internet sucks. Three of them never saw fruition and sat endlessly in a state of "saved drafts", waiting for the moment when I might grow a pair and just post them already.

Possibly my most successful attempt at blogging (minus this one) was my own facebook page, rife with political notes. But then again, that's not entirely fair. On facebook you can tag people in your notes and otherwise force them into reading it. I just decided, after a while, that it was terribly unfair of me to spam other people's pages with my political musings. So I moved into the blogosphere, ready to sink or swim on my own.

That was scary. I pat myself on the back for having 5 posts already (a record). It's scary because, when you cherish something as much as I cherish my writing, publishing that for other people to critique and/or ignore is like sending your child to kindergarten for the first time. How are people going to react to me? How are people going to react to my writing...to this whole thing?

Oh and did I mention I stayed up all night against tonight? Oh well...I guess it's about time I embrace this habit of mine.

I got this GREAT idea though. I was thinking about all the things DH is going to miss this year:

1. My 21 birthday
2. My mom's big family reunion/party thing
3. 2nd Wedding Anniversary
4. Thanksgiving
5. Christmas
6. The cat's birthday (ok so I'm grasping at straws now...)

Anyways, the point is, he's going to miss things. So I decided to be clever. A few years ago when I went to the 2002 Winter Olympics, my cousin was doing a school project called "Flat Stanley" and he asked me to help him. Needless to say, Flat Stanley attended the 2002 Winter Olympics. My mom got really into it and even made a scrapbook of all the places the little flat boy visited.

So my genius idea...I'm going to make a "Flat Husband", and he can come to all these places with me. I'll just take pictures of "Flat Husband" spending quality time with me wherever I am, and then I'll send them to him so he can see what he's been doing in his own absence :)

Yup! I'm going to do that!