An Accident Prone Family

With 5 kids, 2 dogs and a horse there were bound to be some sort of accidents. Well the horse is now gone and so is one of the dogs. They went to the farm in the sky. My older sister broke her leg when she was about 6 and then a little while later. She ended up with a cyst in her knee. My brother got stitches in his lip when he was 18 months and again about 18 months later. He then got stitches in his forehead when he was 7 or 8. I broke my pinky toe when I was about 13 (now 22) and we've had a couple sprained ankles and shin splints in between then and now. My dad recently got deployed and then my sister decided to brake her ankle playing Softball in May. She gets her cast off today though. Then the dog dies about 2 weeks ago. A week later my brother decides to try and scalp himself and ends up with 70 stitches in his head. He didn't really do it on purpose. He was walking under those wooden bridges at playgrounds and thought he had cleared it when he came up and hit his head. He had to of been coming up with such force to cause what he did. We are hoping that he is done because he has worked his way from his lip to his head. My sister's not so sure. There may be a few more broken bones and twisted ankles in the days to come.

How accident prone is your family?

Death of a loved one :(

Loosing a loved one is never a fun thing including when it is one of your pets. As many of you know I have two English Golden Retrievers. We have had them ever since they were puppies. One of them is 16 (Hovis) and the other is 13. The 16 year old has had many surgeries, broken legs and infections but has managed to last for 16 years. She almost died 4 years ago when we were in Stuttgart. The vet told us that if we had waited a few more days to bring her in she would have died of an infection in her uterus. She has slowly been getting worse and worse ever since 2004. She had arthritis in her back legs, especially on the left side and battled infections. On my trip back home my mum told us that she was not doing well and that they discovered a cyst in her throat so she was eating canned food.

I was the only one home on Wednesday and since my friend was coming the next day I was meant to clean the bathrooms. I cleaned one and then went outside to get rid of the stinging nettles because I didn't want her little girl falling in them when she came. As I was going outside Hovis went outside as well and she was breathing a little funny and heavy so I kept an eye on her. I gave her some water which she drank but then she dumped it over as she moved to a different spot. After  couple of hours she still sounded bad but she wouldn't drink any water, so I sat with her trying to pour water on her tongue. I called my mum around 4:30 to let her know and to reminder about going to the commissary. She asked me to come to the base to pick up the groceries and my siblings since she had to work that evening. I must have left around 5pm and got home around 6:30pm. I told my brother he had to pick up the dog poop outside. The next thing I know he's calling me into the back room to tell me that Hovis is dead. I check and she was. She already had flies on her. I was balling...couldn't get a hold of my mum so I had to call me sister to run to her work and tell her. My dad called later (who is in Iraq) and asked how things were, I told him about Hovis and he started crying (she was practically his dog). When my mum got home that night we started digging the hole in the back yard and since it started thundering and lightning we had to stop and finish it the next day. My brother kept his head on during the whole thing and didn't cry, which is a good thing because it was only me, my sister with the broken leg and my brother home at the time. The worst thing though is that she was alive when I left at 5 and dead when I got home. I felt terrible. I know there wasn't anything I could have done, but if I had just sat there with her longer instead of worrying about the weeds.
Hunter (13 years old) is having a hard time adjusting. He has always known Hovis being there. This morning our neighbor found him across the street looking into the butchers glass window, wagging his tail, staring at his reflection. My mum thinks that maybe he thought his reflection was Hovis. He locked the back gate this time and when I went out later I found him trying to get out again to go and look for her. He hasn't quite grasped the fact that she's not coming back. Not only is it going to be hard on him but it's also going to be hard on all of us. Hovis picked us. as her family, we didn't pick her. When we went to pick out a puppy, we all got out the car and all the puppies came running up. They then turned right back around and ran back. Hovis was the one sitting by my dad's feet looking up at him. It's funny how even though pets can't talk back to you and they have to soul, they can become part of the family.

Graduation...Jersey...Home

So Graduation was last Saturday and I can tell you that I was not paying attention during the ceremony at all. Well first of all my sister, mom and grandma came up on Thursday and then on Friday we went to Boston. While there we had to have one of Mike's Pastries cannolies. Then graduation was on Saturday at 8 am. Not sure why it was that early but it was. My uncle decided to drive up that morning from Jersey and arrived at 6am...again..CRAZY!!! He had to leave at 3:30am to be on time. I had found Leeta that morning at the Dunkin Donuts Center, that way I

knew someone that I would be sitting next to. During the speeches and stuff though no one was paying attention at all. On our left there was a group of people with blue hair and yellow t-shirts that said Team Kevin and during the ceremony one of them left and came back with nachos and cheese as if it was a basketball game. After graduation pictures were taken as usual and then we had lunch at Joe's American Bar & Grill. We then did a quick packing up of my things and drove down to Jersey for my Graduation BBQ at my aunt & uncle's house. It was great to see everyone, even though it wasn't for very long. We repacked everything on Sunday and drove down to South Jersey on Monday to take a hop back to Germany. For roll call for the flight was at 5:30pm and we got there and signed up at 1:30pm. This man who was a civilian and who looked like Morgan Freeman put our information in the computer and signed us up for the flight. We waited around in the terminal for 5 hours before getting on the flight although we almost didn't get on. We are so used to other places where they call you up to the counter by name to sign in. Well apparently they don't do that at McGuire AFB. So around 6 when they kept calling for people to check in for the flight we didn't think anything of it because we had already done it and then they announced that the flight was closed and that people should start moving to the gate. At this time we were confused because they hadn't called us and we still had all our luggage. My mom went up to the counter and they said the flight was closed and we explained that we had to get home and that we thought they would call up by name. They didn't want to argue so they took our bags (all 7 of them) without question and put us on the plane (there were 3 of us and 4 seats left). Once we got through security and we were waiting to get on the bus to go to to the plane the guys who had checked us in came out to give us our boarding tickets and said it took some time because we weren't in the system...which was weird because we signed in 5 hours earlier. They asked who it was and we said he looked like Morgan Freeman and they knew who we were talking about. Apparently he didn't put our information in right or something and he should have also taken our luggage when we checked in, which he did not do. So we were lucky to get on the plane. We made it to Germany by the following morning at 10am, went home and crashed (vegged out) the whole day.

Ughhh....Packing

So for the past day and a half I have been packing and separating my stuff according to what I need to take with me for 6 months and what can get put into storage. I love to pack put I hate packing. I hated the fact that I had to pack for 6 months (May thru December), which means I needed to pack summer, fall and winter clothes. That was the worst part because I felt like I was packing too much, but I felt that if I didn't pack too much I wouldn't have stuff that I needed.

So this morning the packers arrived to pick up my stuff for storage and I will tel you this, packers are not environmentally friendly. They stuff about 10 sheets of paper into a box and then start to pack it, and then stick more paper on top. They also wrap stuff more times than they need to be and wrap stuff that don't need to be wrapped and could fit in another box. It's surprising how I have moved so many times and never really noticed it before. Maybe it's because at school everything is about going green and saving the environment, but they are all about that in Europe too, it's just not taught in schools.

My room is mostly empty and I still fee like I kept too much stuff. Do you ever feel that way? Like you just have too much stuff that you didn't een know you had or use once a year?

Pondering the Future

I was at a very enjoyable BBQ at a friends house today and as all the girls went inside later on the conversation quickly turned to marriage and weddings (seeing as three of them were already married and another was soon to be). As they talked about their relationships, engagements, weddings, and things that happened at them and such it made me wonder...Where am I going to be a year after I graduate? (they all got married right after college). Am I going to be in RI? Am I going to be in a relationship? Am I going to be in a kitchen or a bakery? It makes one wonder. I feel that when one is married it is easy to know where one is going to be because you are going to be wherever the other person is, but when you are alone it's kind of confusing and not real clear (although not everything is clear and laid out because it is all in God's plan). But in situations like today it does make one wonder. It also made me feel lonely and inadequate. Because I have never been in a relationship before and thus there obviously no wedding in my future anytime soon. It also hits home when people make comments like "Why don't you have a boyfriend yet" or "Oh, I was excited for you" (when there is a miss communication about who someone is). It does make someone feel like "Well why aren't I in a relationship?" or "Is there something wrong with me?" I do know that I can not control these things though because God is in control of it all and He is all I truly need, but it is difficult in situations like this.

Chocolate Mousse

One of my classes this trimester is 4061. What it is, is the running of a restaurant. We are in groups of 3 people and we have a budget of $125 to fee 16 people a minimum 4 course meal. We then have assigned days and each group executes their own menu. We pick our employees from the rest of the class and create our own menu. My group went 2 weeks ago and it turned out great. This week I am a BOH employee and am making the dessert. The dessert the group chose was chocolate mousse and since I had not made mousse since over a year ago, I decided to test it out this weekend. It turned out really well...no chocolate chip mousse, thank goodness. I am now prepared to make the best mousse that I can this Wednesday.

Bored...bored...bored

You know what really gets me. Facebook and the internet was fun way back when, but recently I have become very bored with it. I always find myself going to the same sites over and over again and they are not very educational, ie; Facebook, e-mail, shopping, amazon, jwu, etc. I get very bored with it and it frustrates me when I catch myself doing it. I need to start reading more and finding other things to do. This does not mean that I am going to stop being on my computer because I need it for homework, but I just need to stop being lazy and find other stuff than going on Facebook all the time. So if you find me doing this, please stop me and tell me to find something else to do.