Overly Worried

I LOVE my husband. Words just can't describe how much I love that sweet man of mine.

Sometimes when I'm alone and pondering life, my minds starts asking the "what if" questions. These are often "what if one of us were to become paralyzed?" or "what if one of use became blind or deaf?" and I think of how we would handle such situations. The most often asked question though is "what if Jaren were to die?". Every time I ponder this question, tears inevitably start to flow.

I don't think these questions often but I was thinking them yesterday. Jaren has been working the noon to midnight shift for the last 5 days or so and a couple of times I've waited up for him. Friday night he got home at 12:25 am, the exact amount of time it takes to get to our house from Fort McCoy. However, last night at 12:30 a.m. he was not home yet. At 12:45 I called him just to see if he was on his way home. No answer. "It's okay" I thought to myself, "he's probably just a little late."

This is about the time that all of my worries and "what ifs" started in full force. I couldn't help myself. I thought he might have fallen asleep or hit a deer while driving home and I was going to be getting a phone call from the hospital. Would I end up calling his family tonight to tell them he was dead? What an awful thing to have happen on an early Easter morning. Easter would become a reminder every year for the rest of my life of this tragedy. Of course, tears were flowing and my eyes had become all red and swollen. I kept thinking, "Get a hold of yourself! You are being ridiculous! He'll probably be pulling up any time now."

At almost 2:00 am, with about a full hour's worth of worry, I hear the garage door start to open. I immediately started fanning my eyes attempting to make them look a little normal. I tried acting nonchalantly so as to hide my spastic worrying when Jaren walked in about 30 seconds later looking all happy. I'm guessing the red and swollen eyes were pretty noticeable because his smile dropped immediately when he looked at me. Then he asked what was wrong. Maybe he was thinking somebody had died and I was about to give him the bad news. All I could do was walk over, put my arms around him and start crying all over again...but out of relief this time. He put his arms around me and held me.

Jaren: "Are you okay?"
Me: Nodding
Jaren: "Were you worried about me?"
Me: Nodding again.
Jaren: "Thank you for loving me so much. I'm sorry I didn't call. I thought you would have gone to bed."

Of course he thought that. I knew he would have been thinking I had gotten tired and gone to sleep. He also wouldn't have wanted to wake me by calling. "Come on" he said. "Let's go to bed."

As we were getting ready for bed Jaren tried joking with me by asking if I thought he was off with some other girl or something. I wasn't joking though when I told him "No. Of course not. I thought you were dead!" I was too traumatized to fall asleep. Tears started streaming down my cheeks about three more times while I held Jaren in a death grip. It took a while to calm down but I finally fell asleep.

What a spastic wife I am! I know I worry too much but this was over the top. Tell me I'm not the only person who gets overly worried about things like this. He didn't answer his phone when I called and he was an hour and a half late...in the middle of the night! Who wouldn't be worried? I'm just glad all of my worries ended up meaning nothing. The times that I do worry about Jaren remind me that life is short and you should never take your loved ones for granted. If I'm ever irritated when Jaren is going off to work I still make sure I calm down, tell him I love him and give him a hug and a kiss. I always think, "You never know when the last one will be."

In the end, the reason Jaren didn't answer my call and was so late was because he was on the phone with a soldier in Iraq. He was getting information to give a briefing to his commander today.

My advice for the week:
Always tell your spouse (or loved ones) that you love them. You may think they know it but it is always nice to hear it. It's okay to tell them 10 times a day. It never gets old! Spend time with them while you have them. It doesn't matter if others think it is silly how many activities or events you decline to attend so you can spend that time with your spouse or family. In my opinion, there's never enough time.

Just stuff...

I know it's been 3 weeks since I last posted anything but there just hasn't been anything to write about. So, I will just ramble for a bit giving updates on random stuff.

Weather:
The snow melted about 2-3 weeks ago. It still freezes at night but depending on the day our temperatures range from 40° to 65°. This week, however, we are supposed to have some beautiful 70° weather!! Maybe those little buds on the trees will finally blossom, the grass will turn completely green, and some spring flowers will bloom. I can't complain though because I thought for sure we would still be getting snow right now. I didn't think we would see it leave until May. The locals say we had a mild winter and an early spring. How lucky were we?!

Jaren's Job (the Army):
For those that don't know what Jaren has been working on here for the last eight months, he plans and coordinates training for units deploying that come through Ft McCoy. Each unit spends a month or two at a "Mobilization Station" where they get paperwork done and train on what they will be doing while deployed. Since he is the only engineer officer (or engineer soldier in general) in his unit, he specifically plans the training for all different types of engineer units coming through. They have a one week simulation where they are training 24 hours a day. This is to give them a feel of what it will be like during deployment to have to do their job at any moment, day or night. This also means Jaren works long hours during these week long training sessions called a Mission Readiness Evaluation (MRE). Last week he probably averaged 12-15 hours a day. A new unit will be starting their MRE this week so he will be working long hours again. This will continue pretty much through April since there are back to back MREs during the month. He won't get much time off or even very many breaks. Poor guy! At least he will get his birthday off on the 17th after being gone all week!

Visitors:
My youngest sister, Ashley is visiting this week during her spring break. So far she has mostly stayed in her "dungeon" in the basement listening to music while texting or sleeping. She only arrived on Saturday and will be staying for the week. She's not really being forced to stay in the "dungeon". We don't have much in the basement other than our sweet home theater setup so she pretty much gets the whole thing to herself. It's just really dark down there so she calls it the "dungeon".
Once Ashley heads back to Washington, I will have a week to re-clean everything for my sister Kristina to come visit. I like having visitors! They will probably be the only ones we get here in Wisconsin since we will be moving in July. We don't know where we will be moving yet.

Lesson Learned:
Do NOT put a strong magnet (or any magnet to be on the safe side) too close to your GPS, IPod, or any other type of computer (hard drive) electronics. It will ruin them and then you have to spend the money to buy new ones.

That's about it. Nothing exciting and nothing new. I'll try to have some pictures to post soon from each visit and maybe even from a birthday party!

Weekend happenings

Jaren had a four-day weekend so we decided to head out to Milwaukee. About 20 minutes into the drive out there I realized we forgot the camera...as usual. It always seems that we either forget to bring it when we need it or we bring it and forget to use it. Sorry, I know that's lame and that is the reason the pictures in this post are ones I copied from other websites. Regardless of the no camera situation, the weekend was still really great!

We drove out Friday afternoon and checked into our hotel (The Pfister) which is a four star hotel we booked on Priceline for cheap! As soon as we got our bags in our room we headed back down to the truck and made our way over to the Mitchell Park Conservatory which is also know as "The Domes".



These domes don't look that great on the outside but on the inside they are filled with plant life. We got to walk through the Tropical Dome...





...where we saw banana trees, papaya trees, orange trees, cocoa trees and lots of other cool things. I've never seen those things in real life...sad, but not even the oranges.



We also walked through the Desert Dome. Though the desert has some very strange looking things it still has it's own beauty. However, I much preferred the tropics over the desert.



There was also what they called a "Show Dome". It was filled with beautiful trees, flowers, grass, ponds, etc. The neat part was that we were there during the Train Show where they have a bunch of garden trains running through the dome. They even had little buildings, people, and bridges going over the ponds.

Then we made our way to our favorite Italian restaurant, Carrabba's. The fact that Milwaukee is the closest place that has a Carrabba's was the real reason we went there. We just found fun things to do while we were there! We had the delicious Chicken Bryan and the wonderful Chocolate Dream Cake for dessert! And to top off the great meal, they gave out a little booklet with a few coupons but even better some of their recipes. One of which includes the sauce for the Chicken Bryan! Yeah! Maybe I'll have a successful (edible) second attempt. :)

Saturday morning we headed over to the Zoo! I know I went to the Zoo in Portland but I only remember the Elephants. The only other time I remember going to the Zoo was in kindergarten and I only remember the two-headed snakes and monkeys. So this was like a whole new experience! It was even a beautiful 50 degrees outside! I would say that my favorite exhibits were between the adorable baby orangutan that was showing off...



...the spider monkeys that were a lot of fun to watch and the polar bear that sat down and watched over his low wall while the trainers were working with the seals on the other side. It was like he was entertained too, or maybe just hoping for some of their fish.



The peacocks were all out walking around the park. It was cool to have 10 of them walk right by you. The males were strutting their stuff to impress the ladies too!



There were also 3 baby tigers which didn't look so much like babies anymore. They were all being lazy just laying around sleeping. How boring (for them and us). At least other animals would sit in front of the glass and people watch. That was kind of funny to see. :)



My all time favorite moment was at the lion exhibit. The lioness was walking across the "cave" and stopped to nuzzle her man while passing by. The whole crowd watching made a "awwwww" sound. Then the lioness walked over to the opposite side where all of the little kids were plastering their faces against the glass. The funniest part was how she just paced back and forth in front of the glass, pushing on it with her head at every turn like she was just waiting for it to break. Maybe she was hoping to snatch one of those kids for a meal.

We were just lounging around Sunday and Monday since Jaren wasn't feeling so well. I have been going nuts having read all of the books I own and now needing more! Jaren just likes to play on the computer or work on his train set when he is sick so I wander around wondering what I could do without a book to read. Finally, at Walmart tonight I looked in the book section and saw the Percy Jackson series. "Why not" I thought to myself so I bought books one and two. As soon as I got home and Jaren rummaged through the bags, he found the first book and immediately started reading. "Hey!" I thought, "I bought those books for me to read." Oh well, it gave me the opportunity to check e-mail and update the blog while he is not on the computer. I'll have it to myself while he is at work tomorrow! :) I hope everyone else had an enjoyable weekend!

Grocery Store Rage!

I really HATE it when I am looking for certain items at the grocery store that I KNOW I have seen before but I can't find them. Even after going to 5 different stores, it's nowhere to be found and I either have to go without or settle for something else. Really it's just the fact that I have to drive to 5 different stores. I used to think it was annoying when I lived in a "city" and there were 5-6 grocery stores within a 5-10 minutes driving radius. Here I drive 30 minutes one way to one store and no success. Drive 30 minutes back home then later drive another 30 minutes in a different direction checking every store along the way that I can and no success.

When I walk into a store I speed walk to the specific section of the store I need like I'm driving on the freeway with road rage, weaving in and out of people or even jogging to get ahead of someone slow that I might get stuck behind. My objective is to get in and get out in record time with as few stops as possible. Keep the car running because I'll be right back out! This is what is known as grocery store rage. At least most of the time I'm only looking for a few items and don't have a shopping cart. I am more careful in that circumstance. Can you tell I am an impatient shopper? It gets worse with each store too. I can be out in a few minutes by the 5th store. And it is just as bad with any type of shopping I do. Please tell me I'm not the only one like this!