My hubby is finally home!!! 14 months, 17 days, 9 hrs later (but, hey, who's counting, right?), he is finally here. YAY!!!
And, a brief list of all the things I survived alone while he was gone:
4 days after he left, I found out I was preggo with baby #3. My other kids were 2 and 8 mo.
A nurse informs me that it is not possible to continue breastfeeding while pregnant, must immediately wean (because even though women have breastfed while pregnant for thousands of years, apparently they were just special. Consult La Leche, increase calories, continue breastfeeding until bear-bear is a year old. (Take that stupid nurse who thinks man knows more than God).
A dr who tells me at my first appt that I must get off the Zoloft ASAP, then later swears he told me to stay on it. Dr proceeds to blatantly lie on my medical records about number of visits and stat of mental health (and I have witnesses to this). Get reffered to his boss, who sends me to another clinic, and he also lies on my medical records, making me look like Britney Spears in terms of my mental health. I go to Hubbys rear-d to try to get help with blatant abuse by dr's, am informed that I am on my own (and that is a quote).
Meet members of bio-dads extended family. This is a volitale situation for me, because of the way things went down when I was a baby. But it turns out to be a good thing, because his mom is wonderful and now I have another grandmother (love you Omi). Am even patching things up with his dad - a miracle in and of itself.
Potty train 2 yr old while taking care of 9 month old. Bear in mind this is during my first trimester, am so tired I would sleep 23 hrs a day. Get 7 on a good day.
Go to dr, spend 2 hrs waiting for paperwork he swore would be at the front, only to find out he had his dates for my labs wrong. This is when I have it out with hs boss, and get reffered to new clinic, despite protests.
Fight tricare for off-post referral. Win.
Spend forever on phone with tricare because the clinic they reffered me to will not take me because I am too far along.
Take 12 month old to ER in town because she is totally lethargic (read: unresponsive. Breathing, but wont even look at you when you call her name. Wont eat or drink, hasn't had a wet diaper in 8 hrs). Spend 2 hrs waiting to see a dr, get told to "force fluids" and sent home. Listen to mommy-dar and go to post ER. Her O2 level was 78. She would have smothered in her sleep if I had taken her home. She gets hospitalized for 3 days. Make arrangements for mom-in-law to take 2 yr old. Mom-in-law freaks out because 2-yr-old ends up needing an enima. I am 22 wks preggo by this time. Considering nervous breakdown.
Friend's (and I use this term VERY loosly, but more on that later) 2 yr old scribbles on my antique dresser with red sharpie, on natural wood. Also manages to hit my black and white comforter with aforementioned marker. 2 wks later, same child dips purple marker in water, shakes drops all over my linseed finished antique dining room table (which I inheirited from my Great-grandmother. I am not a materialistic person, but the things I got from her are very precious to me). "Friend" promises to pay for these things to be fixed when her hubby starts getting hardship pay.
I babysit aforementioned 2 yr old ALL THE FREAKIN' TIME. Don't feel used, because I figure this will come back around after baby is born when I really need help. (I didn't do it because I wanted it back, but I wouldn't have been quite so codependant if I had known what was coming. Again, more on that later).
"Friend's" hubby now home. Promised stuff will be fixed when his travel voucher comes in.
Promised stuff will be fixed when economic stimulus payment comes in. "Friend" manages to purchase purebred (read: expensive as hell) Great Dane. Table and dresser still not done.
Promise stuff will be fixed after NODS are paid for.
"Friend", hubby, and daughter eat at my house 5+ days a week. I do all the cooking, cleaning, and pay for 90% of groceries. Still babysitting ALL THE FREAKIN' TIME.
Babysit "friend's" 2 yr old for 4 days so friend can go to TX with hubby for his grandfathers funeral. I am 36 wks preggo, have a 3 yr old and a 16 mo old, and no hubby. Please bear in mind that aforementioned 2 yr old does not mind, and is fairly aggressive with my kids. In hindsight, I should have not been around them nearly so much, because my kids 1. picked up bad habits, 2. were frequently tormented by this kid, and 3. I yelled at my kids more than I should have because I was stressed out with the whole situation. Please understand, I know my kids are anything but perfect. My middle child is pretty agressive herself. My oldest loves tantrums. But I was not this kid's mom, so there was only so much I could do, since discipline was anything but consistent from her parents. I am not a perfect parent either, but I should have parented my kids more and this kid less. But, hindsight is 20/20.
"Friend's" child flips one of the chairs that goes with my dining set so many times the back snaps off. This set is antique and has seen children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great grandchildren (no exaggeration), and has never had this happen to any of the other chairs. This should tell you something about this kid.
Have baby without hubby. Have mom and "friend" there. Hubby and I purposely planned his R&R for after I got out of the hospital because I have had 2 babies, no big deal at this point, and I don't want to waste 4 days of his R&R sitting in hospital room (which is like the hotel room from hell, BTW).
End up in the ER for the entire day on the day hubby gets in for R&R due to possible pulmonary embolisms. Have to wean baby for 48 hrs because can't have images done in radiology due to iodine allergy, so am sent to Nuclear Medicine, and shot up radiological contrasts. Spend weekend pumping and complaining about engorement (milk coming in combined with sudden weaning = much pain.)
Hubby comes and goes. I now have 3 kids under the age of 4 (3 and 1/2, 16 mo, and newborn). Fortunately, baby is a good sleeper. Otherwise, I would be in an institution by now.
House gets broken into during R&R while we are in another town visiting family. Hubby has to leave less than 48 hrs after discovering this.
House gets broken into again a month later while I am visiting family again. Get large American Bulldog. Discover that despite the fact that 10 houses in my neighborhood were broken into during the week my house got hit the first time, 1 officers house got broken into at the same time, so all extra patrols were sent to officers quaters. File IG complaint. Am informed that officers are considered more important per Army regs. (I swear I am not making this up).
Bro-in-law comes home w/ me from that trip. Ask "friend" for babysitting so we can go out. Am told no.
Drive to VA, then onto MD, then onto PA for a few days in each place. Bring home best friend who stays for a week. Great times, kids were a wee bit stressed.
Ask "friend" to babysit so I can go out w/ best friend whom I hadn't seen in 18 mo. Am told "no". (These "no's" occured a month apart. Had not requested childcare in between. Please remember, I watched her 2 yr old ALL THE DAMN TIME while I was preggo, had 2 toddlers of my own, and no hubby)
3 yr old starts preschool. I break down while I watch her play during orientation. I was ok when I dropped her off for her first day though. Get lots of pics for hubby on "friends" camera. "Friend" cannot be bothered to find cord to get pics off camera. Lose all these pics when friendship finally dissolves.
Go on another 6 hr road trip w/ kids by myself. House gets broken into again while I am gone. When I told the MPI that it was rediculous that this had happened 3 times in 4 months, he said to me (direct quote here) "Well, at least your popular." The fact that I was holding my 4 mo old son is the only thing that prevented me from backhanding him and ending up in jail for assault. Hubby informs me that I should have hit him. Regret not hitting him.
Go on another road trip. Same person (presumably) attempts to break into the house, but fails this time. Now it is full scale war. Talk to garrison, the head MPI's, and housing, threatening them all with going to the media if something isn't done and NOW. I got informed by my hubby's rear-d commander (again, direct quote) "I suppose the Army is in some way obligated to help you, if the situation is in fact unsafe." I am not suprised when he doesn't do a damn thing to help me.
"Friend" now informs me that she will pay to have my furniture fixed when taxes come in. This is when I finally terminated the friendship. (After reading this, I really have to wonder why in the hell I let this go on for so long.)
Go to see my grandmothers. 6 hrs with the kids by myself. Again. House wasn't broken into this time though.
Go to see my and hubbys parents. 4 hr car trip with kids. Stay for a week, go home, spend 2 days at home before heading to my aunts house for Thanksgiving number 2.
Am stupid enough to have the thought "Wow, in almost 15 months, I have been through alot, but an amazingly small amount of puke." (I HATE PUKE. Spit-up I can deal with, but once your eating chunky, solid food, just ew.) The kids spent the next week and a half puking. *sigh* Spend the next week in and out of dr appts.
I am told Brett will be home Wednesday at 1. Am called at 11 to be told it will be 10 pm instead. Was stupid enough to have already told the 3 yr old. Now have to backpedal. Am called at 9:30 pm by FRG leader to inquire if I had heard from hubby. Apparently, they were unsure if a. The guys were landing in half an hour or b. guys were still in Germany. That's right folks - they managed to lose a plane full of soldiers. Finally determine everyone is still in Germany, due to mechanical issues.
Am told 2 pm on Thursday. Get call at 1:15 saying it changed to 4. Get call at 4:15 saying it is now 5 pm. Ask FRG leader to call when plane lands. Get call from hubby when plane lands, FRG leader forgets about me. Frg leader then sends me to the wrong building to meet my hubby.
And you wonder why I was counting?
LOS ANGELES – Bettie Page, the 1950s secretary-turned-model whose controversial photographs in skimpy attire or none at all helped set the stage for the 1960s sexual revolution, died Thursday. She was 85.
Page was placed on life support last week after suffering a heart attack in Los Angeles and never regained consciousness, said her agent, Mark Roesler. He said he and Page's family agreed to remove life support. Before the heart attack, Page had been hospitalized for three weeks with pneumonia.
"She captured the imagination of a generation of men and women with her free spirit and unabashed sensuality," Roesler said. "She is the embodiment of beauty."
Page, who was also known as Betty, attracted national attention with magazine photographs of her sensuous figure in bikinis and see-through lingerie that were quickly tacked up on walls in military barracks, garages and elsewhere, where they remained for years.
Her photos included a centerfold in the January 1955 issue of then-fledgling Playboy magazine, as well as controversial sadomasochistic poses.
"I think that she was a remarkable lady, an iconic figure in pop culture who influenced sexuality, taste in fashion, someone who had a tremendous impact on our society," Playboy founder Hugh Hefner told The Associated Press on Thursday. "She was a very dear person."
Page mysteriously disappeared from the public eye for decades, during which time she battled mental illness and became a born-again Christian.
After resurfacing in the 1990s, she occasionally granted interviews but refused to allow her picture to be taken.
"I don't want to be photographed in my old age," she told an interviewer in 1998. "I feel the same way with old movie stars. ... It makes me sad. We want to remember them when they were young."
The 21st century indeed had people remembering her just as she was. She became the subject of songs, biographies, Web sites, comic books, movies and documentaries. A new generation of fans bought thousands of copies of her photos, and some feminists hailed her as a pioneer of women's liberation.
Gretchen Mol portrayed her in 2005's "The Notorious Bettie Page" and Paige Richards had the role in 2004's "Bettie Page: Dark Angel." Page herself took part in the 1998 documentary "Betty Page: Pinup Queen."
Hefner said he last saw Page when he held a screening of "The Notorious Bettie Page" at the Playboy Mansion. He said she objected to the fact that the film referred to her as "notorious," but "we explained to her that it referred to the troubled times she had and was a good way to sell a movie."
Page's career began one day in October 1950 when she took a respite from her job as a secretary in a New York office for a walk along the beach at Coney Island. An amateur photographer named Jerry Tibbs admired the 27-year-old's firm, curvy body and asked her to pose.
Looking back on the career that followed, she told Playboy in 1998: "I never thought it was shameful. I felt normal. It's just that it was much better than pounding a typewriter eight hours a day, which gets monotonous."
Nudity didn't bother her, she said, explaining: "God approves of nudity. Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, they were naked as jaybirds."
In 1951, Page fell under the influence of a photographer and his sister who specialized in S&M. They cut her hair into the dark bangs that became her signature and posed her in spiked heels and little else. She was photographed with a whip in her hand, and in one session she was spread-eagled between two trees, her feet dangling.
"I thought my arms and legs would come out of their sockets," she said later.
Moralists denounced the photos as perversion, and Sen. Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, Page's home state, launched a congressional investigation.
Page quickly retreated from public view, later saying she was hounded by federal agents who waved her nude photos in her face. She also said she believed that, at age 34, her days as "the girl with the perfect figure" were nearly over.
She moved to Florida in 1957 and married a much younger man, as an early marriage to her high school sweetheart had ended in divorce.
Her second marriage also failed, as did a third, and she suffered a nervous breakdown.
In 1959, she was lying on a sea wall in Key West when she saw a church with a white neon cross on top. She walked inside and became a born-again Christian.
After attending Bible school, she wanted to serve as a missionary but was turned down because she had been divorced. Instead, she worked full-time for evangelist Billy Graham's ministry.
A move to Southern California in 1979 brought more troubles.
She was arrested after an altercation with her landlady, and doctors who examined her determined she had acute schizophrenia. She spent 20 months in a state mental hospital in San Bernardino.
A fight with another landlord resulted in her arrest, but she was found not guilty because of insanity. She was placed under state supervision for eight years.
"She had a very turbulent life," Todd Mueller, a family friend and autograph seller, told The Associated Press on Thursday. "She had a temper to her."
Mueller said he first met Page after tracking her down in the 1990s and persuaded her to do an autograph signing event.
He said she was a hit and sold about 3,000 autographs, usually for $200 to $300 each.
"Eleanor Roosevelt, we got $40 to $50. ... Bettie Page outsells them all," he told The AP last week.
Born April 22, 1923, in Nashville, Tenn., Page said she grew up in a family so poor "we were lucky to get an orange in our Christmas stockings."
The family included three boys and three girls, and Page said her father molested all of the girls.
After the Pages moved to Houston, her father decided to return to Tennessee and stole a police car for the trip. He was sent to prison, and for a time Betty lived in an orphanage.
In her teens she acted in high school plays, going on to study drama in New York and win a screen test from 20th Century Fox before her modeling career took off.
