100 Days

Actually, it's 99 days. Yesterday was the day when it was 100 days until the end of the year. I just thought 100 days sounded better than 99 for a title...

I don't remember ever even thinking about things like "100 days left" in a year. This year it seems to be all over Twitter. I wonder how come?

Anyway, my problem is that as soon as I saw "100 days left in the year" I started thinking of all the things I might be able to get done in that time. If you've read any of my past posts, you know I've always got lists of things I want to do and get done. So of course, ever since yesterday, I keep thinking of things to add to the "get done in the next 100 days" list. The fact that I didn't even get the blog done until 99 days should tell you something...it's been a busy week.

So here are a few things I've been thinking:

Lose 10 pounds - pretty doable considering I have almost 100 days to do it (would be great if it ends up being more than 10...)

Start walking again (a couple/few times a week)

Start the McGuire scrapbook and get at least three months worth of pages done

Sort through "stuff" - enough to take three trips to Goodwill (or throw the stuff away)

Doesn't seem like too much...most are things that can be done at the same time. A quote I recently saw was something along the lines of "the bridge between goals and accomplishments is discipline." So, I guess we'll see if I manage to accomplish any of these in the next 99 days...it's worth a shot, right?

Flag Quilt - It's Finished!

I've been working on my flag quilt for years (read about it here). I finally finished it last week! While my parents were here, we got a bar to hang it and got it hung up (with a little straightening help from hubby). Personally, I think it looks awesome! It's not perfect but I'm so happy to have it up. Not only does it look great but when I look at it I feel a huge amount of pride in knowing that I started and finished such a cool project.

I've got a ton of other projects waiting to be started and/or finished: stacking alphabet blocks for Bubba, place mats and runner, a quilt for the guest bed, another flag wall hanging...and that's just a few of the quilting projects I'm thinking of. As I've mentioned numerous times, I also want to get back to scrapbooking. I enjoy looking through the books I finished on my USAFA years, so I'd really like to do books for the rest of my time in the AF - as well as finish Bubba's baby book. I need a couple more hours in the day, the ability to sleep less without getting a headache, and/or a better schedule for my day...or all of the above! 

Mental Snapshots

Recently, a name from my past cropped up in a conversation. She was a friend of mine while I was at the Academy and for a few years after. Then something happened, I still don't know/remember what it was, and she stopped talking to me. We got back in touch through e-mail a year or so ago but then she deployed to Afghanistan and I never heard from her again. I'm not sure if she's still there or back home or what...I feel as if I can't really go looking for her again because she seems to have made her choice pretty clear.

Anyway, thinking of her made me think of the four or five rolls of film she offered to get developed for me (she had a place to do it real cheap and then she could get doubles made for both of us to have prints) that I never got back. I know what's on at least one of those rolls - pictures from the day of and week leading up to the USAFA class of 1994 graduation. Since I started out with that class, and their graduation day was the day I re-entered USAFA, there are a lot of pictures on the roll of people/events I cared about. So instead of having lots of pictures to record the year I spent in Colorado Springs, I have about five. I've asked this friend in the past if she ever found the pictures and that I would like to see them. She always said she didn't know where they were since she's moved so much. At least I have the mental snapshots...

I have a horrible memory. That's why I like taking pictures and now scrapbooking. It helps me to remember people and events. Yet there are times where for one reason or another I don't have pictures to help me remember. For example: it's been almost 15 years since my USAFA graduation and I've never even seen, let alone gotten my hands on, the video my father took...On several deployments while in the AF, I didn't want to look like a geek (or too girly) by taking pictures, so I didn't pull the camera out...on a trip to Poland, I dropped and broke my camera - I didn't get a new one for most of my assignment in Germany...most recently, while at the beach with my husband and Bubba - I wanted a picture of our three footprints side by side in the sand but had forgotten my camera up at the house...

Despite my bad memory, I've got some mental snapshots from these time periods and these events. I cherish those mental images even more than the pictures I can put my hands on. Mostly because those few images are all I have from those moments. Do I wish I had something more concrete? Yeah. But since I don't, I'll treasure what I can remember. I just wish my mental snapshots weren't so few and far between...

Stir Crazy

Is it possible to go stir crazy when you have a ton of stuff to do?

We still have boxes in various places and piles of stuff we took out of boxes but have no place for. Yet all I can think of are the projects I want to be working on. Finishing my flag quilt, making pillow cases for Bubba's new kid-size pillow, working on the scrapbooks for my time in the AF, writing in my book journal, actually reading a book...the list is long. What I should be doing is finish getting moved in. Put things away, unpack the last boxes, and take stuff to Goodwill if we don't want and/or don't have room for it.

I feel as if I haven't had any "me" time in forever. Which is crazy since every day Bubba is at school is potential "me" time...it just doesn't feel like it when I'm doing stuff that has to get done instead of stuff I want to get done. I guess the sooner I get the "have-to's" done the sooner I can get to the "want-to's"...

Airman Appreciation

I'm the Airman Appreciation Chair for the spouse's club on base. In the past they've done candy at Halloween (done), cookies at Christmas (done - what a huge to do that was) and candy at Easter. 

This year, especially with Easter being so late, I decided to skip the candy at Easter and do something for Armed Forces Day (21 May) instead.

Operation Homefront in Missouri has generously offered to donate a box of Girl Scout cookies for each Airman in the dorms. They have also offered to donate a CD but I'm not sure if that will happen. The candy (usually 7-10 pieces per Airman) seems a bit silly to go along with a whole box of cookies but I'm not sure what else to do.

Instead of having schools do cards (I had schools decorate the bags for the cookies at Christmas which turned out pretty good) the spouse club stamping group has offered to hand make cards. I helped out for a few hours this morning and I think they're going to be great. Still a lot of work to do though, especially if we want to have them done in time for the meeting next week to get people to write something and/or sign them.

So, if you had a box of cookies and possibly a music CD, what else would you include? There are about 350 Airmen in the dorms but I have a good budget so I think I could do anything within reason (really limited only by time and size...). Any ideas?

Past vs Present

A couple nights ago I had a dream...one part of it hit me so hard that it woke me up, and I haven't been able to forget about it since.

In the dream my mom was giving away a lot of my old childhood "stuff." I knew I didn't need any of it, but I also didn't want her to give it away - it was as if she was giving away my childhood and I would lose it forever. Of course the fact is that she actually did get rid of a lot of my stuff from childhood and I do miss/regret it sometimes - especially when I think of how Boy Wonder would have liked to play with it or have it (or more that I would have enjoyed seeing him playing with the same stuff I did). Anyway, in the dream my mother was beautiful, healthy and happy (she has to use a walker in real life...) which was wonderful and amazing. At one point while she was giving my stuff away and I was getting more and more upset, she turned to me and said "You spend so much time in the past that you're missing the present." Even just typing that line kind of makes my heart skip a beat...

I do spend a lot of time in the past. Sometimes it's "harmless" such as making scrapbooks or looking at old pictures and poems. Sometimes I think it's probably not a good thing, such as when I start thinking about "what ifs" and dissecting choices I've made and things I regret not doing.

What really hit me about my "mom's" statement is that for the last two weeks I had been working pretty much non-stop on a photo album of Boy Wonder's first year. When I started it I thought it was a great idea as it would be faster and more compact than doing a whole scrapbook...probably true but it still ended up monopolizing all my time for quite a while. And while I was working on the photo album (the past) I was missing out on time I could have been spending with my son (the present). Talk about a shot to the gut.

How does one stop spending so much time in the past and start truly living in the present? That's something I really need to work on. I think looking back is a good thing, remembering (and sometimes even honoring) the past is even necessary to knowing how to make the right choices in the future. It's finding the right balance that I need to work on.

Living fully in the present and not missing life's day to day occurrences - that's what I want for my future.

Journal

For Christmas, I received a Five-year journal. I love the idea of jotting down a few lines a day and having five years all in one spot.

I've kept a journal off and on for most of my life. Going through them though, I've noticed that I tend to talk about my feelings more than anything else and they were usually only sad or upset feelings. That, of course, is part of why I kept a journal. However, the older I get the more I realize how much I have forgotten and how I wish I had been a little more detailed concerning events in my life.

I don't remember details about trips I've taken, or people's names, or even some events. This is especially evident as I try to scrapbook. I have pictures that help me remember events but I can't remember who was with me or exactly when it occurred. Sometimes, I have only a couple pictures - and sometimes as I look back I realize I took only one or two pictures of really stupid stuff and not of anything that really mattered in the long run.

A lot of times I didn't take pictures because I didn't want to look silly or look like a "tourist." While I was deployed, I didn't take pictures of people or things around me - but I have a lot of pictures of the airplanes. Cool, but they don't really tell the story.

So between the lack of pictures and incomplete journaling, I feel as if I have gaps in my history.

Hopefully, the new journal will help me keep track of people and events a little better. By having limited space to write in, it seems less daunting - sometimes all that white space was overwhelming and kept me from writing anything at all. Now all I keep thinking is that even one line is better than nothing...

Quiet Time

I haven't been posting very much lately...not much to say...or not much I want to put into words...or maybe just being lax and not wanting to take the time to come up with a topic and then discuss it.

A couple things have been keeping me quieter than normal...Tom has been gone a lot this month, more than usual. I'm not complaining, not really...how can I complain about a week here and there when other people are gone for 120/180/365 days at a time? So I'm not complaining just commenting on how schedules can get messed up with people coming and going all the time. Not just Tom...I've driven back and forth to KY quite a few times in the last couple months...I think it's taken it's toll.

While I would love to write something awe-inspiring and monumental, for now I'll just keep taking it easy - working on another afghan blanket, scrapbooking my years at USAFA, and reading a biography of Alice Roosevelt Longworth...that's enough to keep me busy for a while...

Who You Are vs What You Do

Quite a while ago one of my sisters introduced me to "Daily Om," a website dedicated to "nurturing mind, body and spirit." I get e-mails from them every day with thought provoking articles. Sometimes I read them right away, sometimes I put them in a folder to read/re-read later and sometimes I'm not interested so it gets deleted. that's the beauty of e-mail - I decide what I want to read and when...that's a discussion in itself for another time...

The article I read today was about realizing "You are who you are, not what you do." As usual, I didn't feel as if 100% of it applied to me, but that didn't matter since even the first couple sentences struck a cord: "Our perception of the traits and characteristics that make us who we are is often tightly intertwined with how we live our life. We define ourselves in terms of the roles we adopt, our actions and inactions, our triumphs, and what we think are failures. "

For the last couple years I have had a hard time adjusting to the fact I am no longer an officer in the United States Air Force. Ever since I was 16 years old, all I wanted was to be in the Air Force. Everything I did my last two years in High School was to get an ROTC scholarship or, preferably, to get into the Air Force Academy. Then I struggled, and I mean struggled, to graduate from USAFA, including two years of medical leave due to knee surgeries (and if I'm honest with myself, not as much training/physical therapy as should have been done). Graduating with the class of 1996 instead of 1994 was probably a good thing, for many reasons, but most of all because I felt as if I was starting over with a clean slate. No one in '96 knew how hard my freshman year had been...thus, I was given every opportunity to prove I could handle tough jobs. Whereas had I remained with '94, either I myself or others might have held me back from accomplishing as much as I was capable of - simply due to my less than stellar four degree year. (Another story for another time...)

As an aircraft maintenance officer, I felt as if I had to work harder than everyone else to prove that women could do the job just as well as men - despite the fact that I knew/know nothing about maintenance/mechanics other than what I continuously studied so as not to show my ignorance. I also kept myself apart from others so no one could accuse me of being "soft" or being too friendly with the guys. In other words, I wasn't able to be myself. For ten years, I put the AF and my career above my own needs and desires. I was so successful at putting everything else first, that I no longer knew or even recognized anything different. The way I saw it, what was good for the AF was, in fact, good for me.

Now, I don't have that anymore. I don't have the uniform to hide behind, I don't have the mission to focus on, I don't have the purpose in serving my country...So now, (and something I've been working on for the last two years) I have to figure out "who I am" separate from "what I do."

Sounds pretty easy but as I have found, it's not. At least not for me. I've gone from being a Major in the world's greatest AF to being a dependant spouse (have I mentioned how much I hate that word "dependant"...?) whose main contribution to the world is a blog and blankets (well, other crafts as well, but who besides me really cares about my scrapbooking, and family/friends can only stand so many crafts as gifts...). Doesn't do much for the whole sense of purpose and value thing...

What's my point? I'm not sure if I have one. It's just that the article made me realize, again, how much I have always defined myself by what I do/did. I was AF 24/7/365. And now, how do I define myself when I'm not really doing anything? Do I define myself as a woman who tries to do the right thing...? As someone who loves her friends and family and tries to be there for them, sometimes before they even realize they are in need...? As someone who loves creating "art" even if it's never seen outside my own home...? Yet, aren't all of those still defining myself by what I am doing..?

How do I define myself? As a work in progress...

Missing Friends

In the last few months, pretty much since I started going through old pictures to try my hand at scrapbooking, I have been thinking more and more of missing friends. Some that I have lost forever, some that just somehow drifted away over the years.

Facebook has been a great thing for getting back in touch with old friends. I can't believe the number of people I have "found" again through FB. Yet, FB also has some drawbacks. There must be some contest I don't know about to have the highest number of friends on FB, because sometimes I am totally confused as to why these people want to "friend" me. They are friends of friends or siblings of friends or people I have never even heard of who have no "mutual" friends so I don't know how they found me.

Then there is what I have come to think of as the "High School Hang-up." I wasn't the geekiest person at my school but I wasn't the most popular either. When I look back, I think I have had a pretty successful and surely happy life in the 18 or so years since I graduated high school. Yet, somehow, being on FB and seeing people I graduated with "friending" my siblings or other friends instead of me brings back all those old HS insecurities. Do they just not like me? Why don't they like me? WHY DO I CARE? Yet, I do. So I have been avoiding Facebook like an insecure high school freshman. Hopefully, I will get over it soon, because I really do like FB....

I have also used the internet (mostly Google) to find some old friends. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I have been pleasantly surprised at the response I have gotten from some long-lost, missing friends I have managed to track down. Now, I just have to keep in touch!

Then, there are those missing friends that are truly gone forever. Today marks one year since I lost my friend Carrie and her son Lucas. Today I talked with another friend who was also good friends with Carrie and we just spent some time reminiscing and missing Carrie. Sometimes it is hard to remember that Carrie wasn't perfect; there were so many good things about her. She was a great friend who truly cared about others - often doing little things just to show you how much she cared and that you were thought of; she was a great mother - she loved Ashley and Lucas so much, you could tell just being around her that they were her world; she was a good wife - (though Jim would be the better judge on that) when I stayed with them for two months, it was easy to see how important it was to her to make a good home for him, to support him and how much she loved him. The main thing I will always remember about Carrie was her love of life - she was ALWAYS moving, always doing something. Sometimes she thought of it as a flaw, that she couldn't slow down or sit still...but she was able to fit so much into her way too short life. She touched so many people who are changed forever for knowing her.

While I know I can never be exactly like Carrie, nor should I want to be for I am my own person, I do hope that I continue to grow in my love for others and learn to care more about showing love than worrying about what others may think.

I guess part of that will be continuing to search for those other missing friends and keeping in touch with those I have found. Being a good friend is probably the best legacy I can think of to remember Carrie.