A Few Things About Shell

Ok, so I was trying to think of something at least halfway entertaining to say, since I've been offline for a bit.  Unfortunately, I'm not a very entertaining person and my life is actually fairly normal and uninspiring.  Aside from that I suffer from depression, so really, wanting happy humorous entertainment from me is kind of a daily hit or miss.  I can give you fake happy if you'd like, I'm fairly good at that.  It's one of my talents.


Having said that I see that there are a few new followers to the blog *waves madly at T, Brad and Matt* Hence, I'm going to do a short about me bit to give those who don't know much about me a bit of a background.  Sound good?  Grand, here we go.  I'm a mother of one (only one, thank you Jesus, love her, there will be no more), I'm in my early thirties, ok, 31 to be exact.  I'm originally from Pennsylvania, but moved down to finish my degree at USF in Tampa halfway through college.  I've been married to my hubs for 7.5 yrs.  Wow, 7.5 years.  Dang, it doesn't seem like it's been that long.  He's a USMC officer in flight school at the moment.  He's been in the military about 9 years, I know, they beat me to him!  The bastards!  He was with the Am Tracks (Assault Amphibious Vehicles) before finishing his degree and going to officer school.  Thus, I kind of follow him around.  He was deployed to Iraq three times with the Am Tracks and now if all things go his way he would like to be a Cobra pilot.  (The helicopters with big guns - that's how I remember which one is which).  I'm sure there will be more deployments in our future, but at the moment I'm enjoying having him here.  We're not anything alike, honestly.  It amuses some of our friends and family how vastly different we are, but it seems to work for us, so I'm not questioning it.  A few examples of our numerous differences:  I'm a pacifist, he's a Marine, I enjoy long distance running, he thinks anything over 3 miles is excessive, I'm a - oh my do I even go into politics? - let's just say liberal, he's conservative.  I believe the universe is all connected, he believes we turn to dust when we die.  I drive a hybrid, he drives a truck.  I'm emotional, he's logical.  He wants to take care of me, I try to take care of the world (fyi, this never works, the world's too damn big).  I'm bisexual, he was raised Catholic.  Oh wait, no no, the raised Catholic thing was suppose to go somewhere else, I meant to say before meeting me he was just sexually repressed!  lol.  Fine, I'll be serious (he was though!), he's straight (at least I certainly hope he is, otherwise I missed something big along the way!)  Yeah, that's us, in a nutshell.  We're in Florida at the moment, until we get sent somewhere else.  I don't mind too much though and besides, when it's all said and done and I get to grow old with him, it'll be worth it, even if he is a bit odd.  :)

Woot! I have a new monitor!

Hi guys!  Sorry I've been MIA lately.  My daughter had a run in with her hand and my computer monitor (yes, purposefully and yes we had a long talk about hitting things), so I was computer-less for a week.  It sucked!  I thought it would be kind of nice to get away and it was for maybe a day, then I was over it and grumbling about not having my computer.

I'll post more soon.

My Gloom Cloud is Raining

A friend of mine and I were discussing blogs one day.  His blog is much more entertaining than mine and I enjoy listening and partaking in the banter there very much.  However, this is my take on my blog. It's one of my releases, like a good run, meditating or doing a little yoga.  I won't always be entertaining or chipper, but I'm not IRL either.  Yes, I laugh a lot and I talk a lot, but for the most part I'm rather serious, enjoy my alone time, dislike crowds and I'm rather neurotic.  That's me.  So, I may let my little gloom cloud rain here every now and again.  I'm sorry, I'll pass out umbrellas later.

That all leads me to this: today is not one of my better days.  I kind of knew it was coming, I usually do.  I've noticed I sometimes feel very antsy before a depressive episode.  Is that even what they're called?  Episodes?  I don't know, but the days where you wake up and want nothing more than to pull the covers back up and ignore the rest of the world.  I didn't though, no worries.  I have a whole set of things I'm suppose to do to try and get me out of my funks, my counselor seems to like to give me suggestions for fighting my depression.  They're good suggestions and they do work sometimes, it's just hard to get myself started.  I feel like I'm climbing out of a humongous ditch and I can see the light way up top, but it's so damn far away and the climb up really sucks.  It helps if I stay busy though and I know that.  So, I got up, made Nora lunch, let her sleep in an extra half hr and drove her to school,(rather than having her ride the bus) went and ran a few errands and then went to the field where hay was suppose to be dropped off today for this enormous hay maze that's being made for the month of October to raise money for the school.  Swear to God, only this close to Alabama (sorry, anyone who loves Alabama, but...uh, it kind of sucks rocks) would people be making a hay maze.  It's nice, yes, I understand, but really, hay is itchy, bales are heavy and well, I just don't like it.  lol.  I did take my raggedy ass out and move hay bales to help today though and after that I came home, took a shower, and went for a long, hard run.  I know, it seems silly to shower before running, but trust me, running with hay on me would have been miserable.  I did a hard run to help with the depression and it helps, I know it does, but it scares me too.  Let me explain and you'll all be the first to hear it, because I haven't said it out loud yet and am not sure how to voice it really.  Things are always easier to write than they are to say.  Some of you may think differently of me though.  I don't know, I do sometimes.  When I'm depressed and I just want to run, it's a release, yes, but that's not what bothers me.  It's just, when I'm in that place I want to run until it hurts.  I want it to hurt.  That pain that you get when you're running hard and it feels like your lungs are burning and your chest hurts, that's what I'm striving for when I'm in that place and I don't know why.  I'm punishing myself or I guess that's how it feels.

Shell's Life

I apologize, I'm running on very little sleep again, so if this post sounds as if it has been written by a three yr old that's why, or at least that's the excuse I'm using!


My daughter has asthma, seasonal allergies and eczema.  Apparently they generally come in threes and she was blessed with them all.  Hopefully she'll out grow them and the eczema isn't too bad, although that may be because I lather her up with loads of cream as soon as she gets out of the bath everyday.  At least she's good about it, she now just grabs her towel, throws it on the bed and lays on top of it as if to say, "I know we're doing the whole grease monkey thing, so let's just get on with it."  Her allergies this week have been atrocious though and neither of us got much sleep at all last night.  She gets drainage (yeah, gross) when she lays down at night, which causes her to cough, which last night caused her to vomit.  Ah, the joys.  I ended up sleeping in her bed with her, which let me tell you, sharing the bed with a 5 yr old is like wrestling a live octopus.  Lord.


So, moving along with the rest of the life of Shell.  I know, you're all anxiously waiting on the edges of your seats to know what I've been up to for the last week.  Well, Nora began kindergarten in August.  I am now the "Room Mom" for her class.  Yeah, I don't know exactly what that means either, but her teacher sent me a note saying she put me down for it and if I could please go to the meeting, which I did and then ended up as the Volunteer Coordinator for the PTO, as well.  *shakes head*  Today at some point, I'm going in to the Associate Health Clinic of the hospital here and getting my TB skin test done, which I'm guessing takes an entire minute to do, turning in my immunization records and then I'll have a short orientation and should be good to go to begin volunteering there on Mondays and Wednesdays. 

The Muddled Mess of Shell's Brain

I admit, I can be less than intelligent at times. *points at Iv & P* Hush, peanut gallery! However, this morning I was particularly brilliant. Really, I was.

My husband got up at 5:45am, hence I got up. I've tried sleeping through him getting up, but usually it's rather pointless. I'm a light sleeper and for as small of a guy as he is you would think he would pad quietly through the house. No, not even close. He always feels bad too, “oh babe, I'm so sorry! Did I wake you?” No, love, of course not, the other elephant did. So, this morning we get up and I decide to be a nice wife (happens on occasion) and make him breakfast before he goes to fly his little plane up in the sky.  Well, my husband enjoys biscuits and gravy, so that's what I'm going to make. I don't usually eat it, not that I don't like it, but if I'm aiming for cardiac arrest I'd rather have a snickers. At any rate, there I am, decked out in my jammies, in the kitchen at that ungodly hour when I begin to suffer from morning brain. Truly. It's a sickness. Happens all the time and rarely goes away before the second cup of coffee. Now, I'm making biscuits and gravy, but I decide to do it the easy way since it's entirely too early to actually make anything. Thus, I go to the fridge and pull out the biscuits. I then grab the can opener and begin opening my biscuits. My easy-to-open canned, with a image and nice pull here to open directions with a yellow tab biscuits. At this point you would think some synapses would begin firing and say “Hey Brainiac, unwrap the can.” Alas, that did not happen. Instead, I stood mystified by the oozing dough coming out of the can and yelled (no,honest to God, I did) “Chris! Chris! There's something wrong with the biscuits!”  My husband, who was in his office getting ready, came running in to assist me with my seeping pile of dough, took one look at it, looked at me, busted up laughing, didn't even say anything, just pulled the tab, opened it, handed it back to me, smirked, kissed me on the forehead and walked away. Can you believe that bastard?

Happy Labor Day!

Originally this weekend I was to go camping with my daughter, husband, his sister and brother-in-law.  However, due to Tropical Storm Lee and the fact that we live on the Florida Panhandle our camping plans were cancelled.  Can't say I was all that broken up about that.  Instead we hung out, went hiking at a wilderness trail nearby,(We were all sufficiently soaked by the end, but it was good fun, even the dog seemed to enjoy himself.) ordered pizza, visited the Aviation Museum, and made smores using the fireplace.  No use letting perfectly good marshmallows, graham crackers and chocolate go to waste!  It was rather enjoyable, I must admit, even if I did have to have guests staying at my house for a few days.  It's a shame you can't tell family to get a hotel.  Lmao.  Sorry, I'm not much for guests!  Although, my husband did make fun of me when I pulled the vacuum out as they were leaving this morning.  In my defense though, I couldn't help it.  I hate chaos and my house was chaos by the end of the weekend.  I needed to re-establish a bit of order to things.  A friend of mine told me today that I have a "touch of OCD."  I informed him that I have a touch of I don't like a messy house!  There's a difference, thank you.


I hope you all had an enjoyable, relaxing long weekend!

Mysteries of the Heart

As a few of you know, I don't exactly have the best relationship with my father, Harry.  It's not awful anymore, rather not exactly there.  Quick background story, my mother was diagnosed with cancer when my twin brother and I were 6, she passed away when we were 14, almost 15.  For the last few years of her life my father wasn't around much, always working late or on business trips and when things got bad, I assisted Mom and took care of her as much as I could in between hospice and the nurses.  My father seemed to disappear in his own world more and more, sometimes taking my brother with him and I stayed home with Mom.  I was kind of a Mama's girl, so it was ok. When she passed though, he turned what was a bit of a habit into all out alcoholism.  I don't know if any of you have dealt with alcoholism much, but anger, grief and booze are kind of a recipe for disaster.  I look quite a bit like Mom, so things were worse for me most of the time.  He became abusive.  I understand it now, in a way, or I at least accept the hows and the whys of it.  I'm in counseling and I take anti-depressants for my anxiety, ptsd and depression.  My brother forgot about the four years after she died until we left for college until a few years ago when he began having flashbacks (yeah, really) reading his high school English class 1984 by George Orwell.  It was something we read the year she died, so it makes sense in some ways.  The human mind is odd.  That was three years ago.  He's still in counseling and on anti-depressants as well, but doing much better.  We both are.  So, why this post you may be wondering?  No, I don't normally spout out the more private things in my life, or I didn't use to.  I'm trying to work on that.  It's suppose to be therapeutic, I hear.  Personally, I think a five mile run works better, but it's dark and raining outside, so I'm out of luck there.  A few months ago, Harry went to the doctor and they found that his liver wasn't functioning as it should be.  Partially from the drinking, I'm sure, but they also found Hepatitis C in his blood work when they ran a bunch of labs.  To be honest, I don't know a lot about the disease, but I do know they think he contracted it many many years ago (before they screened blood) when he received a blood transfusion after losing his arm in a car accident.  His doctor suggested an antiviral treatment (I think that's what it is) which he was suppose to begin this month.  I just found out, although I'm not sure when the decision was made, that he will not be starting treatments and is apparently going to go to another doctor to get a second opinion.  When I worked up the nerve to call and inquire about this with Harry, he stated that he'd lived with it this long and it hadn't killed him yet.

I can't exactly explain to you why I'm upset, because I don't know.  I speak to the man, maybe four times a year and see him very infrequently and yet, I'm sad.  Like I said before, the human brain is odd, but I find the human heart to be even more strange.

Hurricane Nora

So, a friend of mine posted the other day about he and his husband's imperfect relationship and how he is a bit of a mess maker.  I related and felt for his husband when hearing this, because my hubs is a bit of a slob, as well and I was thinking about all the things he does and ways he doesn't clean up after himself or pretends he can't do something so that I'll just do it for him.  Seriously though, is it all that difficult to move the dishes from the sink into the dishwasher or put the empty cereal box in the recycling or put your dirty socks in the laundry?  Really?  These are things I do simply out of habit, so when it's not done I find it to be a tad annoying at times.  Having said that, I realized this morning that I should thank my lucky stars my husband does what he does and that he is not as messy as a 5 year old.  You see, my child is a disaster.  I know, aren't they all?  However, she is more of one sometimes than others.  Normally my day begins by cleaning up whatever chaos she has left in her wake the night before.  Last night though, I walked into her room and was so stunned I stood there for a few minutes taking it all in.  She has a tendency to wake up at night and eat or play, or what have you.  No worries, I have bells on the doors, just in case she decides one night it would be a good night to take a stroll!  Last night I went to bed about 9:30pm (What?  I'm old!), woke up at 11:30pm, checked in on her and went back to sleep until at 2am, when I woke up again and once more went in to check on her.  Now, sometime in those 2.5 hrs I was sleeping in between my wee love decided to get up from her bed, grab some snacks and throw herself a bit of a party in her room.  Toys were everywhere, books were out of the shelf, puzzles were on the floor...I almost passed out.  It was clean when I went to bed, I cleaned it!  At 2am I, of course, turned myself back around, crawled into bed, closed my eyes and prayed it was all a bad dream.  Alas, it was not.  When I asked her this morning what in the name of God happened in there last night she proclaimed that "the vampire team came in, Mama.  It was scary, but it's ok, I kept us safe."  Uh huh.  *wide eyes*  Vampire team?  Lord.  Where does she get this shit?