Happy Fall!!

Well it looks like winter has arrived on Whidbey Island...and with winter comes the panic of people who arent used to the snow.

Something that really surprised me when I moved out here is that even though we're pretty far north, it really doesnt snow much in the Puget Sound area. Rain? Yes. But snow? Not so much. I had the joy of watching people freak out 2 winters ago when we had several feet of snow dumped on us, and it looks like it may be the same thing this winter.

It should be noted that this area lacks the ability to remove snow from the roads. There are no snow plows on the island and using salt is illegal in the state (something about affecting the salmon in the water, though I heard yesterday that they were using salt in Seattle so maybe this is something that has changed.)

Yesterday it snowed about 2 inches and you would have thought that the world came to an end. There were accidents everywhere. Everything starting shutting down. People who were on base were stranded there for a while because it was taking over an hour for everyone to leave through the only open gate. I can understand some of the panic. Without removing snow from the roads, the snow quickly becomes packed ice, so it makes sense that people would panic while driving.I think the best part about all of this is that in the middle of the snow panic, there was also an earthquake! Mr.V and I didnt feel it and I have to admit that Im a little disappointed. Earthquakes terrify me, but this was a small one, so I think I would have been ok feeling it. We were outside taking pictures when it happened, which is why I think we didnt feel it. Once we came back inside, Mr.V immediately got a text from his friend asking if we felt the earthquake, followed by several Facebook status updates about it. Meanwhile Mr. V and I were saying "what earthquake?" It seems that the general consensus is that it felt like a quick jolt. One guy said "It made my head sort of snap forward" while others described it as "It felt like something huge slammed into my house" Based on the fact that most people seemed to notice movement from inside their house, Mr. V and I assume we would have felt it had we been inside our house at the time. It figures that during the 5 minutes we spent outside we'd miss the 2nd exciting thing of the day. We actually doubted that the earthquake even happened but here's the map from the USGS earthquake site. I circled the quake in red. As you can see, the epicenter was right off the coast of the island, right in line with Oak Harbor. So apparently it really did happen and we just managed to miss it.And this is what the rest of fall is apparently going to look like. We've been experiencing below freezing temperatures for the past 2 days and it looks like that will continue for the rest of the week, so I doubt the snow is going anywhere any time soon. (And before anyone asks - my cats are indoor only cats that we occasionally let outside supervised. We weren't torturing them by putting them in the snow. We left the door open and the ones that wandered outside on their own seemed to really enjoy being in the snow.)

MilSpouse Friday Fill-In #22

1. If you had to be shipwrecked on a deserted island, but all your human needs – such as food and water – were taken care of, what two items would you want to have with you?

I'd want a computer with internet access. As sad as it is, I think I'd lose my mind if I couldn't be connected to the outside world. I'd also want a TV for the same reason.

2. If you were a salad, what kind of dressing would you have?

Raspberry Vingerette. It has the whole sweet and sour thing going on (more sweetness than sour though), which I think could accurately describe my own personality.

3. If you had to live on a ranch, what kind of animals would you raise/own?

I love animals so I'd probably have a little bit of everything. Horses, cows, sheep, pigs, alpacas, rabbits, a few dogs and of course some barn cats. I couldn't live on a ranch that had animals that were used for food though. I'm not a vegetarian by any means, but I couldn't handle the thought of killing my own animals for food. So a ranch for me would pretty much be like my own petting zoo.

4. If your life was was portrayed as a movie, who would you choose to play you and your significant other?

Hmm this is a hard one. I honestly have no idea who I'd want to play me. But since I get to choose who Mr. V would be, I'd say Matthew Fox from Lost. I'd choose him for purely shallow reasons - he's hot. This is actually a pretty tough question!

5. What was the last thing you put a stamp on (envelope, duh, but what was in the envelope)?

My gas bill. And I was annoyed because I can't pay the gas bill online without being charged an additional fee. I haven't figured out the logic behind that yet. Boy I'm just full of exciting answers today aren't I?

MilSpouse Friday Fill-In #21

I'm actually filling this out on a Thursday night so that I can actually post it on a Friday morning, instead of Friday afternoon or another day other than Friday.

So go to Wife of a Sailor for this week's Friday Fill-In:

1. Were you named after anyone?

No one that's real. My mom is actually very opposed to naming people after someone else. She thinks everyone should have their own name because everyone is their own person. So I'm not named after anyone in my family (although I do have a cousin who is named after me - her first name is my middle name - my mom was furious about that). I am, however, named after a soap opera character. Seriously. My mom isn't a TV person, and she's really not a soap opera person, but she started watching All My Children in college and she watched it for years and years afterward. Her dorm only had one TV and it was in a common room so that's what was always on the TV. She really liked the character named Brooke (the character and the name), so when she had me, she named me Brooke.

2. What color, if any, are your toenails usually painted?

Usually some shade of pink if I actually take the time to paint them.

3. How do you flush a public toilet? Hands? Feet? Something else?

Always with my foot. Public restrooms really creep me out, so if I don't have to touch something, I won't.

4. When you were a little kid, which TV character did you have a crush on?

My first TV crush was Michael J. Fox on Family Ties (though I can't remember the name of his character right now - Alex I think?). I can't even remember how old I was when the show was on, but I loved the show and I loved him. I was also pretty obsessed with the Back to the Future movies (I still have them completely memorized), so Michael J. Fox was the one for me!

5. Let’s say you had to lose one of your five senses (sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell). Which one would you choose? Why?

Without a doubt I'd chose to lose my hearing. I can't even imagine not being able to see anything. I can't even begin to imagine how I would get around and function.

It would just be weird to not be able to feel anything that I touched.

I've lost my sense of taste and smell several times already (3 sinus surgeries and the recovery process will do that to you) and it freaked me out each time. I can't even explain why, but eating something without being able to taste it at all, was just creepy to me. My sense of smell was also gone during the recovery process because my nose was packed to the point of not letting any air at all into it so I don't know if its the fact that I can't smell anything or the fact that I panic when I can't breath that makes me cringe at the idea of losing my sense of smell.

My mom is a sign language interpreter and while I don't know sign language really well, I've always been able to pick it up quickly when I needed to. My sister-in-law is also deaf, and while I don't see her that often, its really the best way to communicate with her. So as much as I wouldn't want to lose my hearing, I think I'd be able to adapt to hearing loss much better than losing any other sense.

MilSpouse Friday Fill-In #20

Check out Wife of a Sailor for the 20th week of the Friday Fill-In:

1. A different twist on last week’s question. This week, the first question is: what’s the nicest thing a MILSPOUSE has ever done for you?

During Mr. V's deployment last year EVERYTHING went wrong. And I mean everything. Search back through my blog posts and you'll find endless lists of everything that broke or went wrong while he was gone. About 2 weeks before he came back, one of my cats got sick....REALLY sick. Moses was the cat that replaced my 8 month old kitten that I lost to leukemia a few years ago, so he's pretty special to me. He had crystals and a blockage which is bad, but most cats can be unblocked pretty easily. Not Moses though. He went from having basic crystals and a blockage to needing emergency surgery for bladder stones, only to find out when they opened him up that he had a torn urethra, which would ultimately lead to death if it didn't heal. The vet had him in surgery when she called me to ask if I just wanted him euthanized right then and there, while he was already under anesthesia. Because Moses is so special to me, and because so much other stuff had gone wrong, I completely lost it and broke down. The vet had given him a less than 1% chance of survival. I said no to euthanizing because while I didn't want him to suffer, I needed a few moments to even process what was going on. I tried to track down Mr. V in Iraq - unsuccessfully. I didn't want to agree to anything until I talked to him, and while we had managed to talk almost every day, of course this was the one day I couldn't get in touch with him. I also wanted a chance to see Moses and say goodbye to him before they put him to sleep. So I called one of my friends crying, and without even hesitating, she packed up her 8 month old and met me at the vet to be with me while Moses was put down. That may seem like such a minor thing to some people, but I didn't want to be alone at that moment, and she didn't even hesitate or think about what she was doing. She just came out to be with me. I honestly don't know if a non-military friend would have done that for me. I like to think that they would have, but at the same time I don't think they would have understood how hard it would be to go through something like that while your husband was deployed. I'm very attached to my animals and since this news came on so sudden and quick, it was just horrible to deal with alone. I'll be grateful forever to her for dropping everything she was doing to come to the vet to be with me.

And on a happy note, by the time we got to the vet, I realized I made the right decision in saying "no" to immediate euthanasia. By the time we got there the vet had done some research and called a specialist for advice and Moses' chances of survival had been increased to 20%. Now almost exactly a year later (and after several weeks hospitalized and several months of medicine) he's still here with me alive and well :-).

2. How often do you drive faster than the speed limit?

Umm every single day. And I have a nice track record of speeding tickets to prove it. I try to never go more than about 8 miles over the limit, but my pile of tickets prove that I don't always manage to do that. I should really make a point of slowing down.

3. Did you have a nickname in school? If so, what was it?

I never had a nickname in school, but I did work at a camp where we were required to have nicknames (based on a tradition of it being too formal to call your counselors "Mrs. or Miss" but too informal to call them by their first names) and my nickname was Vega. In college my roommate started calling me Brooklet and thats the nickname that has really stuck around. Several people still call me Brooklet.

4. If your life was a book, what would the title be and how would it end?

I'll have to steal my blog title for this and call it "Life and Times of a Displaced Jersey Girl" because that really is my life. As for an ending, since I'm still hopefully very far away from the end of my life I'm going to leave that one unanswered for now.

5. Look back (in your planner if you have one) to September 14th… what did you do that day?

Absolutely nothing. But I took a cat to a feline cardiologist on the 13th and took a soap making class on the 15th. However, the 14th appears to have been a pretty relaxing, "do nothing" day.

MilSpouse Friday Fill-In #19

Head over to Wife of a Sailor for the 19th week of the Friday Fill-In...

1. What’s the nicest thing a stranger has ever done for you?

A week ago, I don't know if I would have had an answer for this, but a few days ago a guy hit my car in a parking lot. The nice thing was that he stuck around, waiting for me to come out of the store to give me his insurance info and apologize. You would think that having your car hit would annoy you, but I was honestly so shocked and grateful that this guy stuck around, that I didn't even care. Back in Jacksonville I got into a pretty bad car accident. A guy side swiped me, causing me to spin out across 3 lanes of traffic on the interstate and eventually end up in the trees on the side of the road, about 2 feet away from a huge concrete pole. The guy attempted a hit a run, but he blew his tire out and ended up stopping almost a 1/2 mile down the road. My car was pretty messed up and to make matters even worse, this guy was driving on a suspended license with no insurance. Needless to say, I wasn't at all happy that the guy tried to drive away like nothing happened, and I was furious that I had to pay the deductible to have my car fixed. I have uninsured driver insurance, but it really infuriated me that I had to still put out a few hundred dollars of my own money to fix my car because this asshole was driving without insurance. So needless to say, after that experience, the fact that someone waited for me in the parking lot to give me his insurance info so I could fix the damage on my car has renewed my faith in people. And thankfully, the damage looked worse than it was. The front grill of the car has been pushed in, but Mr. V was able to pop it back into place. All thats left now is a teeny tiny little dent in the hood, and since the car is 6 years old and has a few other tiny dents we aren't even going to make these people pay for it. Its not even worth fixing.

And that was a long story to say that these people waiting for me, might have actually been the nicest thing a stranger has done for me. Ive had other dents and bumps in my car that I didn't put there, yet no one ever stuck around to take the blame for.

2. If you are having a hard time going to sleep, what do you do to help yourself?

Thats a good question. I'll be reading other people's answers to get some ideas here. I've had some pretty serious insomnia over the past few years and when I can't fall asleep, nothing helps. Maybe someone else will have a good answer to this question.

3. Name something that makes you wish you were a kid again.

Seeing as Halloween is only 2 days away...I want to go trick or treating again!

4. What is something you never believed until you experienced it?

I never believed in ghosts, but a few of my own experiences (stories for another time) have made me seriously reconsider my opinion about them.

5. What can’t you say “no” to?

Traveling. I'm always up for going somewhere new - whether its just down the street or halfway around the world. I love seeing new places, and I rarely even stop to think about the cost when we're in the process of planning our next adventure.

MilSpouse Friday Fill-In #17 and #18

Since its the day before the 19th installment of the Friday Fill-In, I thought I'd finally get around to responding to the 17th and 18th installments. I enjoy doing these fill-ins but I always seem to be too busy to do them on the actual day that they are supposed to be posted. So here are the last 2 from Wife of a Sailor and hopefully tomorrow I'll actually post one on time!

Friday Fill-In #17

1. What are some things on your bucket list? (from New Girl on Post)

I have a whole long list of things I want to do before I die, but unfortunately that list is in my head, and not written down, so I'm forgetting some of the things right now (I probably should write the whole list down). But off the top of my head this is what I can think of:

~own my own business
~visit all 50 states
~visit all 10 provinces and 3 territories of Canada (we're actually going to be hitting up the Yukon Territory in April - more to come on that later!)
~visit all 7 continents (yes including Antarctica - my aunt took a trip there years ago and her pictures are absolutely amazing)
~open my own animal rescue
~buy an old farmhouse (preferably pre-Civil War era) and renovate it to its original condition
~get my masters degree
~see the pyramids in Egypt
~go to Prague at Christmas
~celebrate New Year's in Times Square (after living so close to NYC and spending so much time there throughout my whole life, I've still never gone there for New Year's)

2. How long have you been a MilSpouse and where have you been stationed so far? (from Raising Roscoe)

I've been a military spouse for 2 1/2 years now and while being married we've been stationed in Jacksonville, Florida and Whidbey Island, Washington. We met in Corpus Christi, Texas though, where I had moved with my ex-fiance. So we count Corpus as a place we've lived, but since we didn't move there together, didn't meet until the end of our time there, and weren't married at the time, I don't know if that counts.

3. What is a list of songs that sums up your life so far? (from Confessions of a Sailor’s Wife)

This one is kind of hard. I hear songs all the time and think "This song is about me!" but off the top of my head I can't think of a whole list of them. The only one thats coming to mind is "Bless the Broken Road" by Rascal Flatts that was my wedding song. It definitely describes my life in the romantic sense.

4. What is your favorite kind of pizza?

I'm not actually a huge fan of pizza, mainly because I don't like certain kinds of cheese (and my Italian family hates this about me). However, I hate cheese-less pizza because the cheese leaves behind a greasy taste that I like and without cheese that flavor doesn't exist. So my favorite kind of pizza would be plain cheese pizza, but with the cheese pulled off of it. So it basically just becomes bread with tomato sauce and a greasy residue, but that makes my taste buds happy. (and for the record, since moving away from New Jersey I haven't been able to find any pizza that even remotely compares to the pizza you can get there. My favorite being Maruca's or 3 Brothers pizza from the Seaside Heights boardwalk.)

5. What are three good things in your life right now?

1. Mr. V is home and will be home for at least a few more months.
2. Our finances are very stable which allows us to live a pretty good life and splurge a little here and there.
3. I have some amazing friends that I've met in this town, which has made life so much easier up here and has helped me learn how to actually love this place!

Friday Fill-In #18

1. Are you a night owl or an early bird?

Neither actually. I love my sleep and while I'm usually awake between 8:30 and 9 each morning, anything earlier than that makes me miserable. I also tend to go to sleep around 10 or 11 every night. My days of staying up until all hours of the night are long gone. I function the best and feel the best in mid-afternoon. So can I call myself an "afternoon person"?

2. What makes you jealous?

I realize this is probably pretty pathetic, but I can't stand when other women flirt with my husband. I know it means nothing to him and I know I have nothing to worry about, but it still makes my anger flare like you wouldn't believe. So I don't know if thats actual jealousy or just anger.

On another note, people who have an easy time in new social situations and who are outgoing also make me jealous, because I wish I could be more like that. I wish I was able to move to a new place and just get out there by myself, but it takes me a while to warm up to new places and social situations, which makes things hard at first.

3. Have you started Christmas/holiday shopping yet? When will you finish?

Sort of. I never actually "start" Christmas shopping, but instead if I find something while I'm out and about that I know someone would like, I'll buy it and hang onto it until Christmas. So I have a few random things bought for people already, but I probably won't finish my official Christmas shopping until Christmas Eve (yes I'm a procrastinator).

4. What would you have a personal chef make you tonight?

Thai peanut sauce. This is my new addiction at the moment. There's a Thai restaurant in town that has the best peanut sauce I've ever tasted and I need to figure out how to duplicate it before we move. So far I haven't figured out how to do that because there are hundreds of different peanut sauce recipes online. Maybe if I had a personal chef, he could taste test the one I like and be a good enough chef to figure out how to re-create it for me. (so if anyone has a good Thai peanut sauce recipe please pass it along to me!)

5. Where was your first kiss?

I feel like I'm really dating myself when I realized that I had to actually think about this. I remember the moment, but I really had to think about what age I was because it feels like it was so long ago. I was 14 or 15, at my friend's house and we were playing truth or dare. My friend knew I liked this one guy who was with us, so she dared him to kiss me and he did. We actually did date for a while after that but there was really nothing spectacular or memorable about him other than the fact that I was furious with my friend when she dared him to kiss him!

Petsmart Halloween

This has become an annual tradition for us, and if you think we're crazy - too bad :-).

A few years ago a local pet store in Corpus Christi asked us to enter their annual pet costume contest. We shopped there all the time and it sounded cute and fun, so we entered, and won 2nd place. We took home a bag of rabbit supplies (I had dressed our 4 rabbits up as the characters from the Wizard of Oz) worth at least $100. Once we realized we could win money we set out for 2 more contests in town - winning 1st place and a $50 gift certificate at one of them, and 3rd place a box of pet supplies worth about $50 from another one. In total we won about $200 worth of animal supplies and in a large animal household, any money or free stuff is always welcome and appreciated!

So for the past few years we have been taking the cats (and rabbits, though 3 of them have died, leaving me with only one character from the Wizard of Oz left). Each year we've won something. We've never won as much as that first year, but I've found that most people dress up their dogs and are shocked to see cats and rabbits in costumes. I think thats what helps us win - we're different from the rest.

This past weekend we took the cats to the Petsmart Halloween contest and walked out of there with 3 cute pictures, and 3rd place with a huge bag of Greenies treats. Greenies are pretty expensive and this bag is huge, so once again, we were happy with our prize :-).

We couldn't take all of the cats because some of them won't tolerate a costume for even 2 seconds, but we packed up the ones who were semi-well behaved and this is what we got. They all look so thrilled....