Category Archives: Life

Sequestration? Continuing Resolution? What’s That Mean to Me?

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A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away. 
~Barry Goldwater

I’m super stressed about this Sequestration and Continuing Resolution stuff. I just wish Congress would get in gear and pass something. Neither party is going to be happy, but they need to come to an agreement. That’s their job.

First, since the media can’t seem to keep the two straight and thinks everything is sequestration, I want to define them. Thanks to the Navy’s Captain’s Call kit, it makes it easy:

Continuing Resolution Defined
The current continuing resolution (CR) went into effect Oct. 1, 2012 when a fiscal year 2013 budget was not passed. The CR limits federal spending to an amount equal to the previous year’s budget amount (fiscal year 2012). On Jan. 2, 2013, the President signed the FY13 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the budget for the Defense Department, but Congress has so far not passed the appropriation bill to fund it, leaving the Navy to continue to operate under the continuing resolution which expires March 27, 2013.

Sequestration Defined
Sequestration is an element of law that requires automatic, across the board, nine percent budget cuts for all federal agencies if Congress cannot agree to legislation that reduces the federal deficit by March 1, 2013.

 

Sequestration and continuing resolution will affect more than just the military. The media isn’t realizing this. Or rather, I’ve just recently heard them talking about it. Millions of education dollars and something like 140 teaching jobs in Washington state alone will be gone if Sequestration happens.

Furloughs aren’t just for DoD civilians (myself included). They are for all federal civilians. FAA, USDA inspectors, border patrol, etc. If Sequestration happens, we may just see longer waits at the airport tarmacs (20% less flight control tower people on duty), higher meat prices (20% less inspections able to be done and no inspections= shutdown of factories until they can get an inspection), border issues, etc.

On top of this, my job is in jeopardy with both CR and Sequestration. I may have to be cut to save money. A 20% pay cut (furlough of one  day a week) would be the welcome effect. And really, it’s more than a 20% pay cut because on furlough days, we don’t accrue personal or sick leave. Over 22 days, that will mean more than a full day each of sick and personal leave that I won’t accrue.

I just wanted to put this out there. I think a lot of people don’t understand how much Sequestration will affect the country. It’s not just the DoD (unlike CR, which is just DoD). This may just send our country back into the spiral that it’s starting to climb out from. Very scary stuff indeed.

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Taking Charge of Your Fertility

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Don’t let anyone steal your dream.  It’s your dream, not theirs.  
~Dan Zadra

There are SO many things that they don’t teach you in health class. There are so many things your MOM probably didn’t teach you. At (then) 29 years old, I thought I understood my body. I thought I understood my cycles and why they happened and all that. Didn’t everyone?

The short answer is no.

TCOYF

If you don’t know what luteal phase, basal body temperature, LH surge and other phrases mean… you don’t know your body. I seriously had no idea that your cervical mucous’s consistency and look were indicative of where you were in your cycle. I had no idea your body temperature jumps high the day after you ovulate and stays high until (and sometimes through)  your period.

I had always been told you ovulate around day 14 of your cycle, give or take a few days. While that is the norm, it’s definitely not that way for many women, myself included. I used to think I was “safe” after the 17th day of my cycle. Guess what? My body ovulates somewhere between day 17 and day 23.  Had I known that when Huzzy and I were not yet ready for kids, there would have been an alternate method of birth control (not that it was needed since I can’t get pregnant, but I wouldn’t have known that then).

Did you know your period comes a certain number of days after you ovulate? And that number of days doesn’t change by more than a day or so? It’s not that your cycle is always XX number of days long, it’s that your period happens a certain number of days after you ovulate. Is your cycle erratic? It might not be! I thought mine was because my cycles were generally somewhere between 27 and 32 days long… but that’s because I ovulated on different days. Had I been tracking my basal body temperature, I would have known when to expect my period down to the DAY.

If these things are as foreign to you as they were to me, I’d urge you to check out the book Taking Charge of Your Fertility by Toni Weschler. . As a woman, you should understand your body. It seriously changed my life. It will do the same for you. It doesn’t matter if you are trying to avoid having kids, trying to conceive, already had your kids… whatever… you NEED to know what’s in this book.

This post isn’t sponsored and I’m not getting anything from it. No one asked me to write it… I wrote it because I believe it’s that important information for women to know.

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Growing up with winter in the Midwest

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Winter either bites with its teeth or lashes with its tail. 
~Proverb

I’m sure you are incredibly tired of me talking about infertility. But in all honesty, this blog is about my life and right now, infertility is ruling my life.  A year ago, my husbands patrols/deployments were ruling my life and that’s what I wrote about. Eventually, we’ll have children (whether they are biological or adopted remains to be seen) and they will probably dominate my blogging.

For today, I want to talk about winter. Winter in Washington is generally pretty mild. We do get snow from time to time and when we get it, it sucks because no one can drive in it, they don’t use salt and there aren’t many plows that can move the snow.

But, I grew up in Michigan. The northern part of the lower peninsula to be more precise (and yes, I can show you on my hand). When I was really young, I loved winter. We would get a ton of snow. Forget snowmen, we’d make snow forts just by tunneling into a snowbank. Sometimes, they were quite elaborate tunnels with multiple “rooms.”

I have a brother who is younger by three years. I would drive the three-wheeler (yes, at 7 years old) with him being towed behind on a rope attached to a saucer or sled. Oh yeah… I learned how to whip that baby around and fling my little brother off. Of course, I wasn’t allowed to do that to him until he was about seven himself, but still… tons of fun.

I can't find a photo of winter in Michigan right now, so here's a photo of my brother and me. He was the CUTEST baby ever!

I can’t find a photo of winter in Michigan right now, so here’s a photo of my brother and me. He was the CUTEST baby ever!

Until it came to the winter during my sixth grade year. That winter, there were three days that hit -20 as a real temp and -60 as a windchill. To say it was bitter doesn’t even begin to describe the hell that was. School was closed for those three days because not only wouldn’t the buses run, but they didn’t want any kids outside. Any skin that was exposed would have frostbite starting to set in in just five minutes. It was horrible.

But guess what? We had horses. And they needed to be fed. And given water. I clearly remember I had “inside” chore duty that week (my brother and I alternated inside and outside chores) but because my brother was only 8, my mom didn’t feel he was old enough to be out in that weather. So I had to help my dad do the horse chores. The horses were locked up in a big run-in (meaning no stalls) barn with tons of straw.

Our water tank had water heater, but it couldn’t keep up with the cold. And all the outdoor faucets were frozen. So we had to haul two five-gallon buckets each from inside the house out to the horse barn. We had to make several trips back and forth (three or so) twice a day. It was so cold we couldn’t make it all the way there without stopping at the horse trailer, which was about halfway between the house and the barn. We’d jump in for a few minutes to “warm up.”

When we’d return to the house, my mom would unwrap our scarves, which were completely ice-encrusted across our mouth and nose thanks to our breath. Our snot was frozen to our face. She’d hand each of us two more piping hot buckets of water, wrap a scarf fresh from the dryer on our face/neck and send us back out again.

It was then that I started hating winter. I still hate it. I think snow is pretty but if it comes with cold, I’d prefer no snow. No way, no how. Due to the inevitable frostbite that started to set in my toes that winter, I now have one toe that–if it starts getting cold–will feel the temperatures before any other one. If it’s too cold, it’ll start tingling and go completely numb. Luckily, that hasn’t happened since I moved to Washington.

What was your worst winter?

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I’m alive

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Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own. 
~Robert Heinlein

I’m still here and still alive. I just finished up a marathon summer, which included six weeks of traveling. Because of this and Huzzy’s most recent deployment, we still haven’t spent more than two weeks together since Christmas. And he’sbeen home since April.

Kittens at three weeks old.

We’ve been dealing with some things lately. The number one issue is that for the past six months, we’ve been unsuccessful in trying to become pregnant. We’ve done everything right and even with my traveling, the timing has been perfect. But nothing. And that’s on top of the year (minus a total of 14 weeks Huzzy was deployed) of “not trying but not preventing.”

It’s been long enough that my doctor wants me to come in and she’s going to try and see what the problem is. Huzzy already had some tests done and it’s most definitely not him. So whatever it is is my problem. Hopefully we can fix it easily. That being said… does anyone know of an RE in the Kitsap area that you love/trust? I may need to find one.

Huzzy and I are also dealing with some personal things, so please pray/think good thoughts that things work out well.

On top of that, we have some absolutely adorable foster kittens. In fact, we have six of them and they are 6 1/2 weeks old. So freakin’ adorable. Momma just went back to the Humane Society yesterday… she stopped nursing the kittens and was getting tired of them. So it was time for her to focus on herself and get a home.

Deep Musings

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Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not. 
~Samuel Johnson

So the other day I was thinking some deep thoughts. Actually, I’m not sure if they were THAT deep of thoughts because they were thoughts of Kevin Bacon. Or rather, six degrees of separation… which made me think of six degrees of Kevin Bacon.

LOL, but I digress.

So the other day, there were some climbers on nearby Mt. Rainier who fell and needed rescuing. While being rescued, a park ranger fell himself and was killed. The climbers all ended up being okay. However, I saw on my Facebook that my friend’s coworker’s niece was one of the climbers. And that got me thinking. I had no idea who these climbers were yet now I find out I’m only three degrees separated by these climbers (and by reading my blog, YOU are only four degrees separated).

Here I am listening to the news and then BAM! I have a connection to a national news story. And it makes it hit quite a bit closer to home. It makes those climbers… real and not just a story you hear.

So I got to thinking… what if everyone in this world started thinking along the terms of six degrees of separation? If you think about other people in terms of that, you are most likely closely connected to them… just a few “degrees” away.  Makes what they go through hit a lot closer to home, doesn’t it?

What if everyone in this world thought that way? What if, instead of seeing someone and noticing that they were SO DIFFERENT from you, be it Democrat, Republican, man, woman, black, white, rich, poor, American or Afghani… what if we thought about them in terms of six degrees of separation? They aren’t just some stranger on the street or some story on the news or someone who just doesn’t “get” whatever you think they don’t get. They are connected to you. Quite closely, most likely.

What if we started treating people that way? Treated them like they were close to us? What would this world look like? What would living in a kinder world be like? One where instead of thinking the worst of someone or dismissing them because they are different in some way you find important… what if we treated every stranger as someone who is closely connected to us?

And that, my friends, is my deep musing of the day. Or week. Or probably month. Brought to you from 36,218ft in the air and flying at 577mph somewhere over the state of North Dakota (I’m off to do reserve duty at Boston Navy Week and scored some free wifi thanks to an online contest).