I’m savoring every minute with my husband here on vacation with him in Ft. Rucker, Alabama as he trains to deploy for Iraq soon. Having been here a week with another week remaining, I have finally adjusted well-enough to the incredible heat and humidity that is common here this time of year. The horrible heat is surpassed only by the aggravating driving habits of the rural inhabitants of the surrounding towns and countryside.
We drove to a beach resort on the Florida panhandle this weekend to do some sunning and swimming. We enjoyed the local scenery and food, but although the seafood was obviously the freshest I’ve tasted, I still prefer the Red Lobster in Dothan, AL where we ate my first day here. I’m not sure if it was the thrill of dining alone with my husband or that the food there was so much better, but it tasted as heavenly as any seafood I’ve ever eaten. Although we’ve patronized many restaurants here thus far, I still want to go back to that Red Lobster for more of their cheesy seafood fondue, shrimp scampi, and coconut shrimp. Yet, Joe's Crab Shack in Destin, Florida was hands-down the most entertaining restaurant I've ever seen with their singing/dancing waitstaff that are so lively the crowd often even gets into the act.
We managed to see a couple of movies over the weekend that were both terrible. We watched “Brokeback Mountain” in the hotel room one night and back in Ft. Rucker on Sunday evening, we saw “The Happening.” They both had decent-enough plotlines that engrossed us sufficiently to wait for “the good part” to begin, but we were quite disappointed in them both. At one point during “Brokeback Mountain,” I suggested we turn off the TV and just go to sleep but my husband, who had awoken from a nap halfway through, said he wanted to see how it ended. So, we finished it only to be stumped by the pointless, nonsensical ending. We left the theater wondering if our luck in picking movies was turning sour, but the new “X-Files” movie is due out this week and we’ve both been eager to see it. We can only hope it will be more entertaining than the last two movie experiences have been.
This life of leisure I’ve been enjoying during my visit has filled my soul with warm memories that will be wonderful to revisit when my husband is off across the pond (i.e., in Iraq). Still, I do miss our farm, home, and animals. I picked up a book titled “Watchers” by Dean Koontz and enjoyed it thoroughly. One of the main characters is an intelligent golden retriever named Einstein that so reminded me of our dog, Lucky. Reading through its pages made me feel I was enjoying the dog’s company just as if I had Lucky beside me. It also made me realize my instincts about getting Lucky a mate are right on target because all species want someone with which to share their lives.
This week, I plan to visit the Ft. Rucker pool often and picked up a couple more Dean Koontz books at the local Wal-mart to read poolside. The base has a nice recreational pool and another lap pool. I have wanted to go to the lap pool to exercise, but somehow haven’t made it there yet. I’m guessing the locals fortunate enough to have their own backyard pools use them for exercise as much as recreation as I haven’t seen many outdoor joggers/runners here. Must not be many bookworms either as bookstores are nowhere to be found but, ironically, cosmetic dental surgeons are everywhere.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Mind Games
Today has been a frustrating day with my laptop computer not connecting to my husband’s cable modem in his room at Fort Rucker, Alabama where he’s stationed for a few more weeks until he’s deployed to Iraq. As I am temporarily out of work due to the destructive flooding in our area, I opted to visit my husband for a couple of weeks knowing I could take my work with me on my laptop. Unfortunately, that hasn’t worked out as I’d hoped. Life’s frustrations seem to have found me all the way down here in lower Alabama despite my best attempts to escape.
In muddling things over, I notice the sum of the numbers in today’s date is 23, which my oldest son would say is the reason for my misfortune. Lately, my son subscribes to this theory about the number 23 as this dark force that imparts negative energy into situations and people. So per his theory, it’s just a temporary force that will pass I guess. I have learned from this book I’m reading titled Mind Wide Open by Steven Johnson that emotions and feelings are automatic signals our minds send to our body in reaction to our thoughts and experiences (like the hair on your arm standing up when you are scared). These are signals our bodies give us to warn of potential threat to prompt us to action (like running away from danger). If we determine there’s no reason to flee or change what we’re doing, then it becomes a waiting game until our bodies return to normal and the emotions/feelings pass.
The secret to waiting lies in redirecting your energy/thoughts to keep you from obsessing over the problem at hand. For me the only things that distract me successfully are gardening and writing. Although, admittedly, writing is my way of working through a problem rather than distracting me from it. Gardening, on the other hand, consumes me especially pulling weeds. Frankly, weeds piss me off and despite my many attempts to dig up crab grass roots year after year, I always seem to have just as much left betwixt my beautiful flora and fauna. Even so, I find myself grateful to these weedy denizens for the essential, therapeutic purpose they serve in my life.
Writing and gardening also provide ways for me to manage life without my soldier/husband for another deployment. When hiding in the garden deadheading and pruning plants doesn’t do the trick, I crawl in bed with my laptop and write it out. Somehow, journaling or blogging about my frustrations helps me regain focus on the bigger picture that the daily grind of life tends to obscure. My recent stint as the Family Readiness Coordinator for my husband’s National Guard unit has also helped me to focus on helping other families with deployed soldiers. This experience has helped me realize that dealing with deployment is nearly impossible to do on your own…you need comrades (or a close-knit group of people in the same situation that you are in) to help you navigate the tormented seas of deployment and perhaps even become a stronger person in the process.
In muddling things over, I notice the sum of the numbers in today’s date is 23, which my oldest son would say is the reason for my misfortune. Lately, my son subscribes to this theory about the number 23 as this dark force that imparts negative energy into situations and people. So per his theory, it’s just a temporary force that will pass I guess. I have learned from this book I’m reading titled Mind Wide Open by Steven Johnson that emotions and feelings are automatic signals our minds send to our body in reaction to our thoughts and experiences (like the hair on your arm standing up when you are scared). These are signals our bodies give us to warn of potential threat to prompt us to action (like running away from danger). If we determine there’s no reason to flee or change what we’re doing, then it becomes a waiting game until our bodies return to normal and the emotions/feelings pass.
The secret to waiting lies in redirecting your energy/thoughts to keep you from obsessing over the problem at hand. For me the only things that distract me successfully are gardening and writing. Although, admittedly, writing is my way of working through a problem rather than distracting me from it. Gardening, on the other hand, consumes me especially pulling weeds. Frankly, weeds piss me off and despite my many attempts to dig up crab grass roots year after year, I always seem to have just as much left betwixt my beautiful flora and fauna. Even so, I find myself grateful to these weedy denizens for the essential, therapeutic purpose they serve in my life.
Writing and gardening also provide ways for me to manage life without my soldier/husband for another deployment. When hiding in the garden deadheading and pruning plants doesn’t do the trick, I crawl in bed with my laptop and write it out. Somehow, journaling or blogging about my frustrations helps me regain focus on the bigger picture that the daily grind of life tends to obscure. My recent stint as the Family Readiness Coordinator for my husband’s National Guard unit has also helped me to focus on helping other families with deployed soldiers. This experience has helped me realize that dealing with deployment is nearly impossible to do on your own…you need comrades (or a close-knit group of people in the same situation that you are in) to help you navigate the tormented seas of deployment and perhaps even become a stronger person in the process.
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