Life as it is

Life has been somewhat chaotic lately. I've gone to visit Matt once and I'm going to visit him again next week. I'm tired enough from the pregnancy that its hard to keep up with cleaning the house and taking care of all the other stuff that needs to be done. Well, I blame it all on the pregnancy but mostly its emotions thats making me tired. Emmaline is coping rather well although we are having to deal with a bit of hitting. She isn't exactly hurting anyone when she hits but she is trying to express her emotions by hitting rather than something else. I hope this is a short phase. She is learning more and more every day and its crazy to hear some of the things she says. She picks up on my words so quickly that I really feel like I have to monitor what I'm saying more these days. Matt is enjoying school. He is finally getting to start hands-on work this week which he is really excited for. Next week he'll actually get to watch some explosives being set off. I'm sure its completely safe and all the guys'll be cheering at each blast. The ultrasound for our baby is set for December 21- and Matt gets to be home for it! We are going to find out the gender and tell family and friends on Christmas day. My mom isn't so excited about waiting a few days but I think it'll be fun to have that sort of surprise. I'll keeep everyone updated, of course. It'll be exciting to find out about the gender...we already have a pretty good idea of what names we'd like to use too. Only 5 more months!

A week later...

Its been a week exactly (even to the hour!) since Matt told me he is off to Korea for a year. My last post was a bunch of whining and being disappointed about the whole situation. Although I'm still way way disappointed about the whole situation I'm actually feeling a lot better. Its really a lot better for me to be staying here anyway, for a lot of reasons. But for the first several days my heart and mind were at severe odds. Good reasons to stay: 1 Selling our condo right now would more than likely result in us loosing $10,000+ because of the market. 2 I don't have to worry about changing doctors and finding friends to help with babysitting Emmaline and all the post-birth needs. 3. I don't need to change phone carriers, have my furniture fixed before the we go out of the warrenty area (touch ups), forward my subscriptions, cancel my memberships, worry about keeping my house clean every moment or make sure I'm packing away stuff that I need to have go with us rather than shipped. I think its going to suck big time not having Matt with me but having actually accepted the fact I'm able to push emotion aside at times and just do what needs to be done. And I know that when he comes home after the year it'll be like we just got married all over again. We'll be twitterpated and giddy just to see eachother every morning. I think I'll take a few vacations this year as well...I don't want to put life on hold just because Matt's gone. I may even take the cruise that I wanted for our 5 year anniversary with Emmaline and the baby. I dont know, that may be pushing it. We'll see.

Matt's Tour

As I posted on Matt's blog, he has been assigned to Korea on a one year, unaccompanied tour. (Side note here, my list of 'lies' told by the recruiter is getting longer and longer). Matt was chosen for this post because he was available and they needed someone to fill it. I get the impression that they did not look at his wish list at all before placing him somewhere and I wonder what role that wishlist really plays in things. We looked into trying to get orders changed so it could be an accompanied tour but he has to put in an application regarding it and the guy who told him about it said there is no chance in he.. that he'll actually have his application accepted because he is too low on the totem pole. We looked into me just moving there but the costs are really high and maybe just out of our range. We'd loose a lot of money trying to sell our condo, pay thousands for airfare and either have to send our stuff overseas (I don't even want to start guessing how much that costs) or pack all our stuff into storage and buy all new stuff when I get there. Again, that costs a lot of money. The last option we were thinking about was getting him assigned to Japan after this (he has to choose his next base within a week and then I have the choice of staying put or moving to the new base). If I chose to move to Japan I'd be across the water from him and could potentially see him more often. But... a boat ride costs almost 200$ per person to go from Japan to Korea round trip (plane rides are almost twice as much) plus the driving costs to get to the boats/bases as well as extra food and hotel costs. It again becomes nearly unreasonable to expect to be able to visit any more frequently than if we were living here. The verdict: we don't know. If I stayed here Matt would probably be able to come home after the baby is born but more than likely wouldn't be home for the birth. He would be allowed a 2 week RnR after 6 months as well. It takes 2 days to fly each way so his 14 day RnR would actually be 4 days of travel and 10 days at home. Matt said that he is pretty much not allowed to recieve phone calls for safety reasons but will be able to make phone calls occasionally. He will be allowed to use the Web cam on a regular basis though. Unfortunately, Korea is something like 12 hours ahead of us (or more?) and fitting our schedules together so we can actually talk when Matt isn't working or we aren't sleeping is going to be interesting. All in all, this sucks. Big time. It think it would have been okay had I known going into this whole thing that it was a possibility but the recruiter never even hinted at this sort of assignment. And, he also said that if we ever recieved an assignment we didn't want we could always trade with someone else. No go. Matt is forbidden to change and forbidden to turn it down. So basically its desert or leave his family for a year. I don't sound happy. I'm sorry. I don't necessarily think the military is bad, just at the moment I'm not appreciating it. In a year I'll probably start liking it again.

Things on my mind right now

1. I hate hearing my dishwasher run. Its not quiet and there is one part of the cycle that always scares me because it sounds so horrible. 2. I'm 14 weeks today. Does it feel like 14 weeks? No. And thats probably good. 3. I have a cramp in my stomach when I move around and its been there since last night. I'm wondering if this is something I should call the doctor about... 4. Matt is supposed to get his orders in a week or two. I'm very curious about where we are going. 5. Murphy's law says that anything that can go wrong will, or anything that could be different will be, or basically, don't expect anything because the exact opposite will happen. So I keep expecting that we'll get assigned to my least favorite place on Matt's wishlist so therefore... 6. I've done really well at getting a good chunk of homework done these past few days. Somehow I have to keep that up for 7 more weeks. 7. The dishwasher is making that yucky, scary noise right now. 8. I wonder how long Emmaline will entertain herself by eating candy and dancing to music in her head. Its nice not having to entertain her right now. 9. I wonder when Matt is going to call. 10. I woke up at 8 this morning and was disappointed that I slept as long as I did. When I got to the computer I realized that I didn't set any of my clocks back so therefore it was still actually 7 and I didn't technically sleep as long as I thought I did. Or did I? 11. I really can't leave a list at the predictable 10 points. So I have to add another one to make it 11.