Day three of the new workout.

I need to ease up on the abs, just a weeee bit. I'm so sore that I want to stay hunched over.

That being said, I feel great! I feel like I'm going to be getting better and better and better!

This is good.

Annie Get Your Gun!

The LawDog Files: Women and Guns

I love to shoot. I love the smell of cordite.

What can I say?

They'll convince me that shooting's not womanly as soon as they convince me that I'm a second-class citizen in all ways.

Hey mister, can you spare a dime?

The LawDog Files: Meditations on Entitlement

I keep some bags full of snacks in the truck and I'm not sure if they actually get eaten or not, but I figure it's a few bucks, and if the person actually needs food, they might get some calories out of them.

That being said, I pretty much refuse to give money to beggars, simply because while I can't stop someone from abusing themselves, I can NOT contribute to it.

Oh. FDR wasn't a total weenie. (Love you, John!)

Note to self:

Last night? That was good. You actually got through evening prayers and you felt better for it. Remember that feeling, okay? You like to pray, so remember that when you feel like your head is going to explode, and try it. Saying the Jesus Prayer while rolling silver at work isn't a bad thing either. It brings you out of the work mode and relaxes you and reminds you exactly what's important in life, and it ain't the spots on the forks.

Good job this morning!

We know you're not a morning person, but you actually managed to get up after hitting snooze only ONCE. Yeah, maybe getting up at 0600 would be better than 0614, but still, you got up. Make sure you leave the phone on the other side of the room. Getting out of bed to turn off the alarm makes it a bit more likely that you'll stumble into the bathroom instead of back into bed.

Actually remembering to put coffee in your thermos and take it to school with you? Bonus! Good job on that. It helped when you were bleary-eyed in class this morning. Also, even though we think that morning prayers should be done *before* you leave the house, good job on taking your prayer book to class and reading through them before class actually started.

Tomorrow, though, you need to remember to take your meds in the morning.

Also, you managed to get a lunch put together and remembered to bring it to school with you! Yay. Tomorrow, let's try to remember to bring our water, but other than that? You rock.

We're proud of you for remembering your workout clothes too! That gives you one less excuse to get to the gym on campus and work out. Don't forget to wash them this evening when you get home, okay?

Speaking of working out, good job on the workout today. That's two days in a row, and it's a good start. Thank you for making the committment to work out between classes. It's better than running home to mope at the walls, and you feel better. Not to mention, you do have that icky PT test coming up soon, and you really need to pass it.

Well, all in all, you've gotten off to a rockin' start today. Keep it up! We know you can do it.

Mucho love,
Your heart and body and brain.

Note to self:

Look you,

So you want to scream and scream and scream and not stop until you finally figure out what the hell is going on in your head. Lemme know how that works out for you, okay? Yeah yeah yeah. You had a rough tour, but at least you're still alive, chickie. How many aren't? Quit with the baloney, okay?

You're still lonely. And this is different from the rest of your life how, exactly? You're achingly lonely tonight, with no real desire to pick up the phone and call anyone. Well, the one person you did call was busy, so you let him go. Good! He deserves to have some fun and you don't need to hear from him every day to know that he cares about you, okay?

Gah. You're so emo that you make yourself sick.

Hello? You're a grownup. Get over it.

Do you hear me?

Get.
Over.
It.

Get into school, get into what you need to do. You'll live without friends in SA for a while, at least until John comes home. You don't have time to actually hang out with anyone on a school night and you've got two games going on. Be happy with that, dammit. No, so you don't actually have anyone who invites you over to watch a movie or to hang out after game. Deal with it, okay?

You've got friends in Austin, if you need them, and you know it. Maybe you should try getting your neurotic ass to bed at a decent hour Saturday night so you'd feel like going to church in Austin? Maybe you should actually get to Vespers on a Saturday so you can do confession and then take Communion. You know this shit, Jen! Why are you ignoring it? You're not an ostrich, and pretending to be one just makes your ass stick up, so knock it off.

Now, get off the freakin' computer and get to bed. You've got a killer schedule this semester and you're not going to make decent grades if you're sick.

Lots of frustrated (tough) love,
Me

Hrm...

John has an interesting post up on his blog. While he thinks it's long and pompous, and something that should be ignored, I think it's pretty fascinating.

We talk about faith a lot. We talk about how it affects our marriage, how it affects our home, how it affects our life decisions and how it affects us individually, and I think his take on why we do so is pretty darned good.

Go check it out for yourself.

*sigh*

Too good to be true, I guess.

Gah.

Okay okay okay...

...so a bit more on the last mysterious post.

Anyone know a good, flexible realtor in the Austin/Ft. Hood area? We're not ready to buy now, but I want to start the preliminary stuff now, figuring out what we can really afford, what we can expect with our credit ratings (John's is great, mine is middling but better than it used to be!) and what the actual steps are.

We won't be ready to buy until April, but I think it might take that long to really know what we're getting into and not throw up in the parking lot on the way to sign the papers.

Right now, we're looking to stay near Ft. Hood and Austin, maybe near Florence. I'll be going to school at UT-Austin (and no, I don't see myself developing into a rabid Longhorns fan anytime soon) and John'll be at Hood, so we were thinking about Florence. Austin is growing by leaps and bounds, and I think that Florence is probably going to end up as a bedroom community for Round Rock, Georgetown and Austin in the next 10 years.

John's willing to try and homestead at Hood, instead of running about the country (with the exception of Drill Sgt. in FLW, Mo.) so...

Yeah, he just kinda whipped that dream out from behind his back and dusted it off and put it up to sparkle in the sun.

I love my husband in ways I can't even begin to describe.

WTF is up with the new Google/Blogger stuff when you're attempting to log in?

I don't like it, whatever it is!

Foo.

*OMG OMG OMG THUD*

Let me repeat that- *OMG OMG OMG THUD*

My husband sometimes jokes that I can read his mind. I can't, of course, but it's fun for us to play with the idea.

There are days, though, when I swear he's been inside my head, rummaging about in the file cabinets and the cupboards that hold my dreams. There are times when I am dreaming about something in my head but haven't mentioned it hime, and we talk, and John just whips the dream out from behind his back, shakes it out, takes a good look at it, and says..."Yeah, we can do that. Here's how....How's that sound to you?"

I'm usually so stunned I fall over, like one of those fainting goats. You know the ones I'm talking about, they fall over stiff-legged when they're suprised.

I've been a fainting goat since last night.

More to come later, but it's good. Really good.

Much to muse on...

But not much time to post.

John and I had an interesting discussion about my last post. Many things were said that needed to be said. Many things were said that needed to be said, but ooooooh were they uncomfortable.

Thanks baby. I love you.

Le sigh...

Well, I'm back to working five days a week and school starts next week, too.

Gah. I liked being a bit lazy, but not the fact that I don't make any money sitting on my dead butt. I loathe having to ask for money, and although I know that my darling husband would cheerfully give me the last penny in his piggy bank, it's horribly embarassing to have to hold my hand out. Yeah yeah yeah. I know. My job is to go to school, and the whole tray-slinging gig is a sideline to make my drug money (for fabric, not for illegal pharmacuticals, y'all), but it's still a wee bit humiliating to realize that I'm dependent on someone's else generosity, pretty much.

That's not fair to John, actually. He believes that it is his duty as my husband to take care of me, and he'd cheerfully nuke a small planet but he gets upset if I stub my toe, and I know that he does not resent taking care of me in any way, shape or form. Ever. Evereverever.

That being said, I feel like a total mooch, and looking at the bills, it's reflected in them, so it's back to work I go. I want to be able to buy my gas and my fabric without worrying and without taking money that he gives me to pay for my silly hobbies.

Yes, it's irrational. Welcome to the fact that sometimes, despite my best efforts, I'm neurotic.

There are days I think about going back to AD just to have a steady, predictable income.

Le sigh. Don't mind me. I'm just being weird.

This is why...

I worry.

If this doesn't make you sad, then I'm not sure what will.

But hey...as long as the terrorists don't win, then anything and everything is justified, right?

I'm sorry if sounds really snarky, but I do worry. I worry a lot.

One of the things...

That I love about my relationship with my husband is that we can vehemently disagree on things, but still end up slightly closer to each other than we were when we started the conversation.

I treasure my marriage more and more every day. More and more and more.

I know how hard being married can be, the times when it seems easier to just chuck it than stay and fight, but every day, I am reminded why I will fight for this marriage, no matter what comes.

That, and the idea of John standing at the stove with rugrats frying up donuts. (Don't ask.)

It's been a bit...

Since I've been over here, but I wanted to jot down a few political thoughts, so since I've gotten burned a bit on LJ, this is where I head for that.

I'm a radical middle-of-the-roader. Let me restate that. I'm a centrist. Let me clarify. I do not think either party has a lock on the truth and I don't think either party is going to be the salvation of FITB. There, do we have that?

Now, that being said, I hear a lot of folx complaining about the fact that the Dems are getting shut out of the political process. That's probably true, but part of it's their own damned fault. Dems are seen, rightly or wrongly, as anti-American, anti-military, anti-white-middle-classers, anti-anyone who's not on the handout bandwagon. Whether such a thing even exists is debatable, but perception shapes reality.

I don't vote a Dem ticket because I'm tired of being sneered at for being...oh...strapped enough to shop at Wal-mart, dumb enough to join the military (I got off active duty after 9/11 and joined the NG knowing I'd end up deployed), deluded enough to belong to a church that's older than most of the civilized world and conservative enough to make a Baptist blink. I'm tired of being told that I'm not part of FITB minority, and that I don't matter.

I don't vote a Republican ticket because I don't like the fear-mongering. I don't like my government trying to pass off gross violations of civil liberties as "necessary." I don't like being told that anyone down on their luck is just lazy or stupid, or whatever. I don't like being told that one of our Constitutional duties, to examine what our government does in our name, is siding with the terrorists, and that if I don't agree with everything the government does I'm un-American.

Please note that both these generalizations are gross stereotypes and not indicative of the true feelings of most of the Dems or Republicans in the real world.

Yes, helping other people out is a good goal, especially if they're in a position where they can't help themselves, and I'm all for a hand up. I'm all for making sure that schools in bad neighborhoods get the money they need and that parents who have at-risk kids get assistance. I think a lot of it should come from churches, and from private charities, though.

I think that people should be encouraged to assimilate into American culture, including discouraging ethnic enclaves that allow people to stay insulated and comfortable in a Little Havana or a Koreatown or wherever. And yes, that means that I think upper-middle class neighborhoods need a bit of a kick in the butt, too. There's more out there than your Mercedes-drivin' tennis-club buddies, Buffy, and they might have something to teach you.

Where in the world was I going here? Um. Right...AH!

One of the things that I disagree with my darling husband on is the amount of civil liberty I am willing to give up in order to be safe. I'm not willing to give up too much more than we've already given up, and in fact, I'd like to see some of the stupidity that started after 9/11 rolled back. I am not, in any way, shape or form, a fan of the Patriot Act. I'm not a fan of the TSA and I'm not a fan of the warrantless wiretapping. I don't care if I don't have anything to hide! I don't, btw. I'm just not thrilled with idea of being nibbled to death by ducks.

So, a night or so ago, we started talking about the internment camps for Japanese during WWII. I tend towards hyperbole when I get my dander up, and the internment of American citizens tends to get my dander up. So, publically, I'll apologize to John for inflating the numbers from around 120,000 to "millions." Um. Right. That was Not Cool. Sorry about that, honey.

Anyway, here are some of the "facts" from Wikipedia. (God, what did we do before the Wiki?)

Japanese American Internment refers to the forcible relocation of approximately 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans, 62 percent of whom were United States citizens, from the West Coast during World War II to hastily constructed housing facilities called "War Relocation Camps" in remote portions of the nation's interior. The American camps were only meant to isolate the Japanese, in contrast to the Nazi concentration camps which existed to eliminate their captives.

So, out of the 120,000 people relocated, over half of them were American citizens. Repeat after me. WTF?

Okay, so maybe there was a good reason. After all, that 40% might have had spies and sabateurs loyal to Japan, right? Er. Maybe not.

Critics of the exclusion argue that the military justification was unfounded, citing the absence of any subsequent convictions of Japanese Americans for espionage, as well as the fact that the Army resorted to falsifying evidence in order to bolster its case before the Supreme Court in Korematsu v. United States. In response, pro-internment author Michelle Malkin has argued that the absence of any esponiage convictions is immaterial because the government may have possessed unspecified secret evidence of espionage that it was not able to introduce in court; however, her argument has not met with much success among professional historians.^{[citation needed]}

Lieutenant Commander Kenneth Ringle, a naval intelligence officer tasked with evaluating the loyalty of the Japanese American population, estimated in a 1941 report to his superiors that "more than 90% of the Nisei [second generation] and 75% of the original immigrants were completely loyal to the United States." A 1941 report prepared on President Roosevelt's orders by Curtis B. Munson, special representative of the State Department, concluded that most Japanese nationals and "90 to 98 percent" of Japanese American citizens were loyal. He wrote: "There is no Japanese 'problem' on the Coast ... There is far more danger from Communists and people of the Bridges type on the Coast than there is from Japanese."

All in all, I'd have to say the interment was damaging to the United States.

I mean, even J. Edgar Hoover didn't think it was a great idea.

FBI director J. Edgar Hoover opposed the internment of Japanese Americans. Refuting General DeWitt's reports of disloyalty on the part of Japanese Americans, Hoover sent a memo to Attorney General Francis Biddle in which he wrote about Japanese-American disloyalty, "Every complaint in this regard has been investigated, but in no case has any information been obtained which would substantiate the allegation."

So, I'm not feeling it, and I think that it's a pretty clear case of abridgement of civil liberties and fundamental rights guaranteed to citizen amounting to...um...not so much.

Some present-day supporters of the internment have argued that some Japanese Americans were indeed disloyal, as seen by the approximately 20,000 Japanese Americans in Japan at the start of the war who joined the Japanese war effort, hundreds joining the Japanese Army. Additionally, two Japanese Americans on Niihau freed a captured Japanese pilot and assisted him in his machine-gun attack on Native Hawaiians there.[3]

Critics of this viewpoint note that it seems unlikely that Japanese Americans in Japan had any choice other than to be conscripted into the Japanese army, given (1) that it was near-impossible for them to return to the U.S. from Japan, and (2) that the United States had already classified all people of Japanese ancestry as "enemy aliens."

Some present-day supporters of the internment also cite the disloyalty of Tomoya Kawakita, an American citizen who worked as an interpreter and a POW guard for the Japanese army, and who actively participated in the torture (and at least one death) of American soldiers, including survivors of the Bataan Death March. Kawakita was imprisoned in Alcatraz Island for his treason.

Despite all this, it must be noted that the FBI had no documented proof of espionage or sabotage by any Japanese American or Japanese national in the United States, except for a small group of ineffective Japanese nationals who were arrested long before Pearl Harbor and were deported (the Tachibana ring).

I'd have to agree with the idea of the 20,000 Japanese Americans in Japan not being able to come home, and even if they could...why on God's green earth would they? They'd be stripped of their rights!

So, let's say, for the sake of argument, that there were 1200 sabateurs found. I'm still not thinking that a 1% return on the internment justifies it. I just don't.

And like I said, I think it damaged a whole lot more than the Japanese-Americans who were stuck in the camps. I think it damaged a whole lot more.

Some Japanese Americans did question their loyalty to the United States after the government removed them and their families from their homes and held them in internment camps, although such cases were isolated incidents and did not reflect the larger sentiment of the Japanese-American people, who remained loyal to the United States. Several pro-Japan groups formed inside the camps, and riots occurred for various reasons in many camps, most notably Tule Lake, which caused the WRA to move "troublemaker" internees to Tule Lake (see below). When the government asked whether internees wished to renounce their U.S. citizenship, 5,589 of them did so. Of those who renounced their citizenship, 1,327 were repatriated to Japan, although many of these deportees were not accepted by the Japanese Government.

So, even after being moved into these "relocation" camps, only 5, 589 (or 4.6575%) of the internees denounced their US citizenship, and of those, less than 1500 were accepted by the Japanese goverment. Evidently, Japanese with dual citizenship were asked to denounce their Japanese citizenship, but since they no longer had US citizenship, denouncing Japanese citizenship would have left them with no citizenship at all. That's a catch-22, by my definition. I might be wrong.

Drat. I've wandered off the path again. Right now, I have no clue where I'm heading with this.

Ah. Okay. Here we go.

This is to both parties:

Quit it. Quit pandering to the whackos on the far ends of the spectrum and figure out that most of us are stuck here in the middle. I don't like either of you demoninzing and lying and everything else you're doing. Knock it off.

Thank you.

*sigh*

Well, let's see.

My credit score is still limping along, but I guess it's all I can hope for, to be patient and ride out the wait. I thought stuff usually dropped off after two years, but I've got stuff on there from 2003, and some of the information's not been updated since March of that year.

Gah. When, exactly, does all that crap drop off, and why is it that when you screw up, the credit reporting agencies put it on your report lickety-split, but getting them to take stuff off takes an act of God?

Yes, John, I know. You didn't marry me for my credit score, but it does have an effect on you. It affects our ability to get a loan for land or a house or a car or just about anything.

Tuition is due 31 Aug. Need to email Maria and find out when I need to turn in the app for the tuition assistance, if I can get it this semester. If so, that will be easier to live on while I study since the art classes are going to take up a fair chunk of my time.

*sigh*

You know, I adore being a grown-up and being married and all that, but still...

Is being able to leave the refrigerator door open all night to air condition the neighborhood really worth this?

Dum dum dum...dum dee dum dum dum....

Don't mind me. Just getting ready to actually go sew some more quilt squares.

:-D

Well...that feels weird.

I just cut the flags and nametapes off my DCU tops, in order to put them in the Goodwill donation box.

It feels weird to be dropping what was such a part of my life for a year and half in a box.

I know. I'm strange.

In other news, just dropped a healthy payment on the credit card so I can put tuition for the semester on it. Yoikes.

I'm sorry.

I seem to be saying that a lot the past few days.

I'm sorry for snarking at you, baby. I love you.

Nineteen down...

And 30 more to go before the top is actually finished. Wheee!

I've got the fabric for the backing and the borders picked out, too.

Now, I just need to get a free-motion foot for Big Blue and figure out what I want to do for a quilting design for the top.

My goal...

Is 20 blocks finished today. Wish me luck!

If I have not...

mentioned exactly how awesome my husband is in the past hour, I have been remiss. Completely and utterly remiss.

What brings this on, you ask? Oh...the fact that he sends me huge pink bouquets for any reason, or none at all, because it's our anniversary, or because it isn't, quite.

I have never, in my life, been so blessed by someone. And it ain't just the flowers, either. He reminds me to take care of myself, to take my meds, to get enough sleep, and he reminds me, every single day, how much he loves me.

John, I love you.

*fnor*

Not much else, just *fnor*.

John and I got cut off mid-mush this morning. This is my sad face. Foo.

I have a quiz in class today and then, I'm coming home, finishing my article, and processing the photos, and sewing! Whee.