MilSpouse Friday Fill-In 12 & 13

I missed last week's Friday Fill-In, so this week I'm doing 2 of them at once.

So head over to Wife of a Sailor for last Friday's questions:

1. Do you set goals for yourself during deployment? What are some of them? (from Military Mommy)

Well, I did set some goals for myself while Mr. V was deployed, but to be honest, I don't think I actually achieved any of them. I wanted to get our house completely unpacked (we've lived here for over 2 years but we still have piles of unpacked boxes in our garage), but needless to say he's about 6 months away from his next deployment and we still haven't unpacked completely and we probably never will. I guess thats ok though because obviously we've lived here completely fine for 2 years so we clearly don't need anything in those boxes, plus we'll be moving again in about a year anyway. I also wanted to go the gym daily to get myself back in shape. I think I went maybe 10 times during the entire 7 month deployment. So the answer is, yes I set goals. Do I actually accomplish those goals? Nope!

2. What would you say to someone dating a military guy or gal? (from Mothering Off the Cuff)

I'd tell them to make sure they know what they're getting into. I realize that you can't help who you fall in love with, but this life is harder than I ever imagined it to be and I've met people who just can't handle it and end up divorcing - not because they don't love their husband, but because the life was too hard for them. You need to be prepared for long periods of separation - in many cases, this doesn't just include full deployments. In Mr. V's case he's only been on one full deployment, but right now he's not here because he's doing an exercise in Guam for a month. He's spent weeks in San Diego, Hawaii, Maryland, and Japan - all for short periods of time, but that time adds up. We've been married for just over 2 years, but we've probably only spent a year total of that time together. When he is home, his hours are long and unpredictable. Sometimes he works days, sometimes nights. So even when he's home, he's not always "home". Its not a bad life, but its definitely something that you need to be prepared to deal with, otherwise you just won't cut it as a military wife. Even now I still hate how often he's gone, but I've learned to just deal with it and accept it.

3. If you have children, how do you prepare them to move to a new place? (from The Random Ramblings of A Household 6)

We have no kids, and thats probably a good thing. I cried when I found out we were moving to Washington, and I'm already on the verge of tears thinking about our next move, because I really, really, really don't want to go back to Corpus Christi and that's a definite possibility. So if we had kids, I don't imagine that I would be able to give anyone advice on this. I can't even figure out how to prepare myself for a move to a new place!

4. Name one hobby that gets you through alone time. (from My Sailor’s Mistress)

Reading. I love reading and don't have the time to read as much as I'd like to. Mr. V also has a hard time understanding why I like to be left alone while I read. He calls it my "only child syndrome". I call it needing space to myself. And because he doesn't understand why I like to shut myself in a room away from him and the cats for a bit, its nice when he's not here so I don't have to explain to him again that I just want some peace and quiet and a chance to be alone to absorb myself into my book.

5. What’s the one food you don’t ever get tired of? (from That Army Wife Life)

Spaghetti. I could eat spaghetti every single night of every single week. My family used to eat it at least twice a week when I was growing up. I don't think its even possible for me to get sick of eating it so often.

Now head over to Wife of a Sailor for this week's questions:

1. How do you spend your deployment money, do you save, pay off bills or enjoy the extra money while it is there to buy the things you do not normally have? (from Troop Petrie)

We didn't do anything specific with the extra money. Some of it automatically went into savings, since part of our income will always go straight into savings, but as for the rest of it, we didn't have any definite plans for it. We like to travel a lot though - both day trips and overnight adventures and that can start to add up, so I guess thats where the extra money goes. If we didn't have the money, we couldn't go on our fun adventures, so in reality I guess any extra money we come into - deployment related or not - goes into our adventure fund :-).

As a side note, Mr. V did buy himself an old truck - seen here - when he got back from Iraq, but I don't know if that counts as a post deployment purchase or not since it was only $600 (not including the restoration work that needs to be done on it, but I won't add that all up until he actually has time to start restoring it.)

2. If you could relive one occasion or moment, what would it be? (from Currently On Land)

I want to go back to the Olympics! Being able to go to Vancouver during the Olympics this year was quite possibly the coolest thing I've ever done. Walking around the city and going to one of the events, was just amazing. If you've never been to the Olympics, its hard to explain what it was like. The atmosphere and the excitement around the city was almost surreal. Plus the fact that the Olympics only happen every 4 years (or 2 if you alternate between summer and winter Olympics)...and they only happen in one city...and almost the entire world is in the city at the same time, its just such a great experience. I'm already trying to figure out if its possible to go to London in 2012 for the summer Olympics, but after going to the winter Olympics I would LOVE to go to Sochi in 2014 for the winter experience again. It was just such an incredible experience that isn't something that one could easily relive.

3. What’s the worst job you ever had and if it was so bad why did you take it? (from Faith and Deploying)

I've never had a truly horrible full time job, even though I also haven't had one that I really love either. But I guess the worst "job" I ever had was a babysitting job. When I was in college, my school had a babysitting list that you could add your name and contact into to. Then parents could come by the college and pick up a list and then find a babysitter. One mother contacted me and when she found out that my roommate was also on the babysitting list, she said she was interested in hiring both of us. She made it sound wonderful - we could work with a good friend, AND she would pay us $10 an hour EACH for about 30 hours a week. AND she would be home the entire time we were there. Well lesson learned - if it sounds too good to be true, its too good to be true. She had 5 kids, which was her reasoning behind hiring 2 babysitters. I didn't find this weird at first, but I should have. I had babysat for another family with 5 kids, and while things were a little hectic, they weren't bad. That job just required a lot of energy. Well this lady failed to tell us that she had a 7 year old boy, who had sever anger problems, and he hated his baby brother. He was mean. He was violent. And he went out of his way to try to hurt his baby brother. We couldn't turn our backs on him for a second, because he was determined to seriously injure the poor baby. We ended up quitting for several reasons, but the biggest one for me was that if this kid managed to hurt, or even worse, kill his baby brother, I would be the one who would be held responsible for that and I didn't want that on my shoulders. I think we only worked for her for 2 or 3 days total, and she wasn't at all happy with us when we quit, but seriously? I'm not going to take a job where the risk of a child getting seriously injured is on my shoulders. We did what we could to keep this kid apart from the baby, but its impossible to watch a kid 24/7 when there are other kids in the picture too. It was just a horrible situation and one that I never want to repeat!

4. If you could play any character on TV, who would you be? (from Many Waters)

Kate from Lost. It should be noted that I don't watch a whole lot of TV. I usually have the TV on, but as for shows I follow and really pay attention to, there aren't many. I only became a Lost fan 3 weeks before the show ended for good, but now I've watched the entire series, and bought the box set so I'm in the process of re-watching it now. Its actually a show that I had refused to watch because I knew I'd probably get hooked on it, and I just wasn't interested in getting hooked on a new show. Then I babysat for a friend with no cable. She had 3 channels. The 3rd to last episode of Lost was on. It was the only thing worth watching on TV and even though the episode made absolutely no sense to me, it was enough to make me go home determined to watch the entire series, just so I could figure out what the heck was going on. So this seems like an easy answer to me. Tropical Island + 2 hot guys that you could have your choice of (Sawyer and Jack) seems like a good choice to me. (of course I'll ignore the fact that she's also a fugtive - everyone gets a new life on the island ;-)).

5. If you could become the world’s expert in something, what would it be? (from Army of Two)

Cats. I don't want to be a vet. I just want to be an expert on the animals in my house so I don't have to continuously spend endless amounts of money on my cats. If I could diagnose and treat them right here at home, it would just make life so much easier for me!