I have an amazing boyfriend. That's all there is to it.
He sent ME a care package last week. ME! Contents:
(4) boxes Kraft Mac & Cheese (my comfort food)
(3) microwaveable brownie-dealies (oh. my. gosh. so good and so quick)
(1) each, tooth paste and tooth brush (because he knows that all of the care packages that I send include toothpaste because I'm a fiend about brushing)
(2) refills for my bath and body works scent diffuser, Cherry Blossom scented because there is no bath and body works on the Island and he doesn't want my room to smell like my boy housemates' rooms.
(1) most sweetest letter ever. (yes, I know that is terrible grammar. I don't care. See? Punctuation in parentheses...)
How incredibly wonderful, and it was such great timing- it arrived on Friday and I had just gotten out of a class that made me question my entire graduate school existence as I had spent three hours being completely lost in a discussion about the battle tactics of Alexander the Great that everyone else was seeming to follow. He is so sweet, so very very good to me.
Also- good news- he says now that they are not going to kick him out until after Thanksgiving... Whoo Hoo! Super Secret Army Land, here I come! (No- not really, we probably won't even go on base if any of you censor people are reading this, I promise!)
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Friday, October 26, 2007
So Proud of Myself...
That I called Ranger Man as soon as I got home tonight (after midnight his time- I knew he was in bed) to let him know how excited I was that I made nice with "a wife." Not so much excited that she was nice to me, because she seemed like she was a decent human being... but I was proud that I wasn't scared off by the fact that she is a wife, and I actually told her about Ranger Man. I don't think that it is actually that wives are mean- it's just that I'm scared of them... they could be mean. There are enough mean ones out there... Plus, he's been home long enough (two months yesterday), that I think I'm finally calming down and coming out of protective introverted deployment mode. So this woman, who I've been literally scared of all semester, her husband (who just got back from deployment about a week ago) sat in on a class tonight, and they gave me a ride home, and it was nice. First of all it was nice to talk to Army people and not Marines. Not that it's a huge difference, but we could talk about installation names and be on the same page- it was nice. Secondly, their situation is similar enough to ours that it was kind of comforting to think that I may not be as crazy as I thought- they're married, but him being home is the first time that they are living together, because they didn't get to see each other much before either. Hmm.
Anyways- I was proud of myself. Just wanted to share.
Anyways- I was proud of myself. Just wanted to share.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
An Idea!
Okay, so I have an idea to help Ranger Man. It will require the cooperation of his best friend (female) who doesn't like me (and, well... the feeling might be mutual and completely valid on both sides I might add), and his family (I've met his parents once), but I think it will be worth it. In SA, Angels put together postcard books sometimes for their soldiers, with postcards from all over the country. So I'm kind of going to go with that idea, and get postcards from his friends and family, of places he would enjoy- and on the back, a brief word of encouragement, etc... and a joke, to make him laugh.
Cutesy for Big Bad Ranger Man? yes... but I don't know what else to do.
Cutesy for Big Bad Ranger Man? yes... but I don't know what else to do.
Phones, again!
Why is it that when phone lines die- it's always at the worst possible time? No matter where they originate from, when they die, they die in a flamboyant and fantastic sort of manner...
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
(dis) Couragement
How do you convince someone to believe in them self?
When Ranger Man went to Ranger School he was convinced that he could do all three phases in one try and he knew it was going to suck and it was going to be hard, but he was convinced that he would do it. He believed in himself, and it was easy to facilitate that belief and confidence and help him.
With this school though, he is out of his element. Without going into too much detail, I'll just say that he is discouraged. It's much harder to convince him that he's awesome and amazing and will do a fantastic job when he absolutely doesn't believe it himself. Plus it's hard over the phone or through letters. I can tell him that he's wonderful, but there's no one to show him that he's wonderful, and there is a big difference. So I talk to him and I write to him and we make plans for when we get to see each other again. On the one hand- I've told him that whether or not he completes this course doesn't make any bit of difference to me, because he'll still be him. But on the other hand, I know that it would be horrible for him to not pass.
So I'm not sure what else to do, other than more of the same. What I want to do is bake him a cake, but I'm not sure how that would mail... I think baked goods make everything all better.
On the bright side, only 30 more days until Thanksgiving... (not that I'm counting, or anything)
When Ranger Man went to Ranger School he was convinced that he could do all three phases in one try and he knew it was going to suck and it was going to be hard, but he was convinced that he would do it. He believed in himself, and it was easy to facilitate that belief and confidence and help him.
With this school though, he is out of his element. Without going into too much detail, I'll just say that he is discouraged. It's much harder to convince him that he's awesome and amazing and will do a fantastic job when he absolutely doesn't believe it himself. Plus it's hard over the phone or through letters. I can tell him that he's wonderful, but there's no one to show him that he's wonderful, and there is a big difference. So I talk to him and I write to him and we make plans for when we get to see each other again. On the one hand- I've told him that whether or not he completes this course doesn't make any bit of difference to me, because he'll still be him. But on the other hand, I know that it would be horrible for him to not pass.
So I'm not sure what else to do, other than more of the same. What I want to do is bake him a cake, but I'm not sure how that would mail... I think baked goods make everything all better.
On the bright side, only 30 more days until Thanksgiving... (not that I'm counting, or anything)
Lt Murphy
I have had my parents buy me current copies of the NY Times to send to me both today and yesterday to see if maybe- just maybe they didn't drop the ball so badly on this one? (And partly because this is a great case study for my ethics class) Nothing on their web site, you'd think they'd have to print something, right? Anyone know? If only people on this Island read the Times- I haven't seen a current edition in about two weeks!
NY Times- The Dreamscape of Nightmares
The NY Times has an interesting article about dreams... leaving me with much food for thought.
"Few of us suffer from nightmares crippling and persistent enough to demand treatment." Yeah, well- some of us have, and trust me it's not fun. Especially when they still can't figure out why, and so instead your shrink tells you to A) stay away from any kind of news (what, am I supposed to live under a rock?) and B) fundamentally change who I am as a person and my goals in life, because I shouldn't read books about war and violence. Seriously? On the bright side, he wrote me a prescription for some pills that do help me sleep- for the first time in my life I am getting a full night's sleep at night, and I am not afraid to go to sleep.
The formal definition of nightmares- bad dreams that wake you up. Cool. Now if there was only something they could do about it... But the fact that most of our dreams are bad? That's awesome! Not because I think everyone should have bad dreams, but it means that I am not so incredibly psychotic after all in the fact that I have never had a good dream. Everyone else is just in denial- that's perfect. Granted, once or twice a month would generally be a drastic reduction for me, but still I do feel a teensy bit validated.
Also- I can remember being 5 or 6 (at the oldest, it may have been younger) and being awoken by the same nightmare night after night after night. Mine actually seemed to decrease when I was a teen, which is consistent with the fact that I also don't dream if I'm going through something huge emotionally. Being a teenager wasn't exactly fun for me. However, now that I'm in my twenties, apparently my body thinks I can handle it again. Thank you body.
I thought the bit about being paralyzed during REM sleep was interesting. One of my exes- the stupid firefighter- also had crazy dreams like me (that's why we thought we were perfect for each other, we were the same kind of crazy), but he also had a tendency to do ... things in his sleep. Apparently he had in the past hit one of his ex-girlfriends, and I can tell you from experience that he did other things in his sleep too, things that you really need to be awake to enjoy. And he would have no recollection of any of it in the morning. That is not good for a girl's self-esteem. Maybe he just didn't get into REM sleep enough...
"Fear extinction memories..." interesting. I will buy this if they will allow this caveat: maybe I manufacture my own memories. Watching scary movies, or things of that nature- if those can give me the kind of memories that I need to work out in dreams than this may work.
I also like their point about a bad dream (where you stay asleep) being good and productive, while a nightmare is not because your mind doesn't get any resolution. I pretty much always wake up, but I know that there are some days that I can feel I'm going to have dreams, and definitely after a doozy I feel ill for a whole day afterwards. Part terror at the prospect of going back to sleep, part exhaustion and partly due to the fact that I usually spend the next day reliving the dream also.
All in all, it was a very interesting article to someone like me.
"Few of us suffer from nightmares crippling and persistent enough to demand treatment." Yeah, well- some of us have, and trust me it's not fun. Especially when they still can't figure out why, and so instead your shrink tells you to A) stay away from any kind of news (what, am I supposed to live under a rock?) and B) fundamentally change who I am as a person and my goals in life, because I shouldn't read books about war and violence. Seriously? On the bright side, he wrote me a prescription for some pills that do help me sleep- for the first time in my life I am getting a full night's sleep at night, and I am not afraid to go to sleep.
The formal definition of nightmares- bad dreams that wake you up. Cool. Now if there was only something they could do about it... But the fact that most of our dreams are bad? That's awesome! Not because I think everyone should have bad dreams, but it means that I am not so incredibly psychotic after all in the fact that I have never had a good dream. Everyone else is just in denial- that's perfect. Granted, once or twice a month would generally be a drastic reduction for me, but still I do feel a teensy bit validated.
Also- I can remember being 5 or 6 (at the oldest, it may have been younger) and being awoken by the same nightmare night after night after night. Mine actually seemed to decrease when I was a teen, which is consistent with the fact that I also don't dream if I'm going through something huge emotionally. Being a teenager wasn't exactly fun for me. However, now that I'm in my twenties, apparently my body thinks I can handle it again. Thank you body.
I thought the bit about being paralyzed during REM sleep was interesting. One of my exes- the stupid firefighter- also had crazy dreams like me (that's why we thought we were perfect for each other, we were the same kind of crazy), but he also had a tendency to do ... things in his sleep. Apparently he had in the past hit one of his ex-girlfriends, and I can tell you from experience that he did other things in his sleep too, things that you really need to be awake to enjoy. And he would have no recollection of any of it in the morning. That is not good for a girl's self-esteem. Maybe he just didn't get into REM sleep enough...
"Fear extinction memories..." interesting. I will buy this if they will allow this caveat: maybe I manufacture my own memories. Watching scary movies, or things of that nature- if those can give me the kind of memories that I need to work out in dreams than this may work.
I also like their point about a bad dream (where you stay asleep) being good and productive, while a nightmare is not because your mind doesn't get any resolution. I pretty much always wake up, but I know that there are some days that I can feel I'm going to have dreams, and definitely after a doozy I feel ill for a whole day afterwards. Part terror at the prospect of going back to sleep, part exhaustion and partly due to the fact that I usually spend the next day reliving the dream also.
All in all, it was a very interesting article to someone like me.
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