Sometimes...

You wanna go, where everybody knows your name!

In the Army life you move. A lot. That causes you to have to restart your social circle constantly. Hopefully as the years go on you go to a base where you know some people from previous bases.

I am blessed to have the best of girlfriends from Home. The 410. I have my dear friends there and I have known them all for several years if not all of my life. I miss them. This is the hard part of this life. My girls back home know me in and out and I am just a little more goofy and myself with them.

In my army life time I have met wonderful people. I tell you, WONDERFUL. But very few know me on a deeper level. Part of that is not having time to open up or not having the energy to open up since you just did that a short 6 months, year, or two years ago.

I love the ladies I have met and specifically at the great 'ol Fort polk.

Most of you know my injury list and mishaps. There are too many to speak of, however, I am going to speak of a few after I was married. Too many before I was married ;)

One situation came when I started working at a local elementary school. I started working in the fourth grade and Jimmy deployed a few weeks later. As I mentioned before, I found out I was pregnant AFTER he left. As a newly married, never have lived on my own before, living in the strangest place I could have ever dreamed of, and newly pregnant I was nervous as to what would happen if I needed something.

One day I was at school teaching and realized I was beginning to what I thought would be a devastating nightmare. It was all I could do to not ball. I didn't know what to do. I walked in and told my para that I was going up to the office for a second. The principal and counselor were standing in the office and I couldn't help it. I just let the tears flow. The quickly assured me everything was going to be ok and offered to take me to the ER. I told them I was ok but did think the ER was necessary so I walked back down to my room passing so lovely ladies in the mean time. I explained I was leaving and why and they quickly told me they would take care of everything don't worry about a thing and a generous woman who didn't even know me offered to sub the rest of the day and told me to just leave. I left and spent the morning in the ER and the counselor called to see if she could come sit with me, bring me lunch, or drive me home when I was released.

Another situation came when I was enjoying a nice afternoon after work and heating up a meatball sub, when I caught my kitchen/stove on FIRE. I realized there were HUGE flames coming out of the oven and grabbed the phone to call 911. They told me they had to redirect me because they don't service base and there was another number I had to call. Are you kidding?!?!? So they told me to go outside. I grabbed the fire extinguisher and tried to put out the fire and thought I did, there was just too much smoke for my wheezy self so I needed to leave ASAP. I'm outside on my drive way, barefoot and pregnant with smoke billowing out of my doors and 5 neighbors drive past and don't stop. RUDE! So after the fire station showed up (not to mention the chief happened to be a students father who was coming the next day for parent visit day). I called my friend of a few months, told her what happened and she had a bed made up for me before I even showed up to her home.

The kindness of strangers (essentially) has always made me feel well taken care of and shows me that God always provides. However, I miss my heart to hearts and laughing until I cry. I miss my friends babies screaming in the ice cream shop and them insinuating that It was my kid instead of theirs. I miss clothing fashion shows in kitchens, I miss my dad coming to look for me because I told him I was leaving a friends place and 3 hours later realized I had never left (oops! We had things to talk about).

So, My babies and I will be going back to the place where everyone knows our name for the month of december to reconnect friendships and recharge a little.

It's hard work living in a place you have not met anyone and your husband is going to be traveling :)