I'm here.

I've been bad about blogging lately. Monday was a pretty awful day and I had a pity party for myself while Bean napped. I cried my heart out missing Christopher, feeling completely alone, and needing a mental break.

Things are definitely starting to get better though. I usually do not hang out with other Army wives but it was like a godsend when an Army wife from the next village over called me on Tuesday. I'll call her K. She invited me over to hang out with her and her 3 year old daughter and it was SO needed. She invited me to go to MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) with her the following morning which is run by the church. Honestly, I'm agnostic and organized religion really isn't my thing but it was an opportunity to get out of the house and be around other adults for a few hours.

It was actually pretty nice. I will probably continue to go every Wednesday to be around other people and they do things once a month for the kids. I grew up basically living in church every Sunday so I don't mind the religious discussion. They're bringing in a German lady in a couple of weeks to do songs and dance with the kids and I think it'll be good for Bean to be around it. Then, a dinosaur park the following week.

K and I are planning on either going to the zoo next week or up to Trier. We're planning on doing day trips once a week and other small outings and I'm excited. I can't have another day like Monday. It was just too depressing.

And now, on this beautiful Thursday, I am going grocery shopping with the little lady.

Can I Live With You?

I've come to the conclusion that we are never going to find a suitable place to live. We get less of a housing allowance now that Christopher is a WO1 than we did when he was an E-7. They were going to close down the base a few years ago and gave a lot of the on base housing back to the locals. Now, there is a shortage of available housing on the local economy for the soldiers and their families. Sweet. They should have just closed this shit hole of a base down. We are looking at properties closer to Ramstein, which I am totally not opposed to because the further I get from Baumholder, the better! It just sucks that Christopher has to make the treacherous drive up the side of an icy snowy mountain during the winter. Luckily (or not so luckily) he will only be here for this winter and another winter because of his deployment and our PCS date. Most of the people we have talked to live closer to Ramstein and just do the shitty commute. Unfortunately, that means that we will probably have to pay out of pocket for our rent. A lot of people have put in packets to change their housing allowance rates to the housing rates the soldiers in the Ramstein area get but they're still sitting on someone's desk waiting for approval. You would think that if everyone has to live in the Ramstein area because there is absolutely nothing available closer to Baumholder, they would support their soldiers immediately.

I know, you're probably thinking, you get free rent! Military pay is not that awesome, the military tells you what city and state to live in, and the Euro makes the dollar its bitch. I don't even want to get into the horror stories I've heard about people having to pay assloads of money for their utilities because their metering system here is strange. The meters get read once a year so basically you pay an estimated amount (based on the previous year) every month for utilities to your landlord. You have no idea if you've gone over that monthly allowance or not so at the end of the year, you could owe your landlord mucho dinero, you could break even, or you could get extra cash back. And apparently you have to buy your oil in bulk? I don't even know how that works. I don't know if I'm remembering this correctly but you buy anywhere from $1,000-$2,000 worth of oil to heat your house for the year and you have to do this every year or something. Yeah, who knows how this shit works.

Fun facts about the base here in Baumholder:

1. Highest STD rate of all the bases in Europe.
2. Highest sexual assault rate of all the bases in Europe.
3. One of if not the highest suicide rate of all the bases in Europe.
4. Highest pregnancy/birth rates of all of the bases in Europe.
5. Highest male to male sexual harassment rate of all the bases in Europe.
6. Highest reported child neglect rate of all the bases in Europe.
7. It is overcast and gray 75-80% of the year.

Does this sound like an awesome place to live or what?! Exactly where I want to be when my husband is deployed for a year and I'm left alone with my daughter. Sweet! So yes, closer to Ramstein? I can dig it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm excited to live in Germany. Once Christopher gets back from deployment, we are going to have an amazing time travelling around Europe with our daughter. But this initial part? Blows. I'm 8 months pregnant, I want to get my house in order before the baby gets here, and I just keep hearing the ticking of the clock on how much time I have left with Christopher and how much time he gets with the bambino before he packs up his gear and has to say goodbye for a while.

Today, the gloom and doom wins and I'm having a pity party for myself. Today's the type of day that makes me miss alcohol. And Xanax.

At least I still have a few cupcakes to make me feel better.

Gobble Gobble!

I'm an idiot.

I feel like I'm a Thanksgiving turkey right now. Stuffed and on the brink of exploding. Why do I feel this way? Well, never mind the fact that I have a human being taking over my body, I also decided to keep her company with a ridiculous amount of food. Why do I always do this to myself? I am so miserable right now I could just throw a tantrum and kick people in the shins. I just wish I had people to kick in the shins. I don't think PB would appreciate that and I would just feel like an asshole if I kicked the dogs. Vega already has a bum leg and Philly... well he just looks pathetic to begin with.

I'm seriously tired of being pregnant. Sometimes I just want to say fuck it and tell PB that this is our one and only child because I refuse to go through this again. I know I'll be a total idiot and do this again though. Do you think one day we'll evolve and reproduce in a way that doesn't totally suck ass? Dude, I want to live in THAT future. The top of my belly button is starting to poke out. Cute yeah? No.

I cried last night. I was looking at a clothing website that had really cute dresses. Honestly, I have nowhere to go that I'd need a fucking dress but that's not the point. I could wear them if I didn't look like I had a basketball stuck to me. So then I start thinking about how I'm going to look after I have this baby and I get scared. I mean seriously... where did all this extra skin come from? I don't have stretch marks yet but I am going to get bigger than this. It's just hard for me to understand how I even had room/skin to grow as much as I did but after the baby.... where the fuck does it all go??? What if I just have this deflated tire of extra skin around my mid-section?

So I'm laying in bed feeling pretty sorry for myself and PB tries to get frisky. I just feel so disgusted with how I look that I tell him no and start crying. Pathetic right? So then he stops and tells me that I'm still beautiful and I'm not fat. I start blubbering about my horrible pregnancy acne and my stupid hair and my fat arms and legs and he just tells me I'm silly and that everything will be fine after the baby. I waited until he fell asleep and then I woke him up to have sex. LOL! I find myself doing this a lot now. I don't know what my deal is! He'll start getting frisky and I'll tell him no. He starts falling asleep, and I get irritated that he's falling asleep and then I initiate. I mean what the hell is that about?

So yeah, one of the many reasons I think my sanity said goodbye a long time ago.

Being alone is not fun.

It's been a crazy couple of weeks but here I am, finally settled in one place for a while. I dropped Poppa Bean off at school and he'll be there for a month. He'll lose his phone privileges soon which I'm not happy about. It's amazing how attached you become to someone and how little joy there is when they're not around. I really don't know how I'll survive when he deploys if I can barely handle knowing I won't see him for a month. Being pregnant and emotional doesn't really help either.

I'll be 11 weeks tomorrow and I have an appointment on the 15th. It's at a brand new doctor and I'm hoping that they don't make me go through all of the initial appointment crap again. I already know that this appointment will probably be a waste of time and they'll just schedule me at a later day for the stuff I actually need to get done during weeks 10-12.

I took the Intelligender test for fun and it said boy but then I did the Chinese gender predictor and it said girl. I really hope it's a boy but ugh, it'll probably end up being a girl. I know, nothing to say ugh about but I just really don't want any daughters. I bought belly bands because my pants are uncomfortable. I am not really showing, I just look like I ate too many cheeseburgers... and I have. I'm breaking out in pimples all over my face and now my back. It's awesome. So much for feeling beautiful while pregnant. I just feel fat and pimply.

I haven't been getting AS tired as I was the last couple of weeks. My boobs are not as big as I read other people's being. They've just gotten fuller, not bigger. Sometimes, I just feel like I'm not pregnant. I guess I'll feel better when I go to my appointment next week. I am going to ask them if they will give me an ultrasound.

You know, with Poppa Bean being gone... I had the gutwrenching feeling today that it was just sad that it was no longer going to be just me and him anymore. I know that sounds so unbelievably selfish but I love us. I love our time together. I love that we can just fully enjoy each other at all times. It's kind of sad to know that that's going to be gone.

That and I just got an earful from my aunt about how she couldn't be both a mother and a wife because the children just consumed so much of her and the husband doesn't really know how to deal with that.

Obviously... I'm not having a good pregnant day.