LOT'S OF SLEEP

Apparently I was more tired than I thought after watching the game yesterday. I went to bed around 2:45 PM because I hadn't done more than doze a tiny bit the night before and thought a nap would do me some good. Although I usually go to a Bible Study at 7 PM on Saturday nights, I figured I'd most likely wake up on my own before then and so I didn't set an alarm. So much for that idea. My radio turned on by itself at 9:30 pm and woke me up for the first time. I figured that since I had just slept for 6.5 hours I wouldn't be able to get back to sleep for awhile. About 30 minutes later I went back to bed and shortly thereafter fell asleep again. I woke up once just long enough to check the clock and saw that it was 6:30 AM, and then next time I woke up was my alarm going off at 7:45 AM. Totaling all of that up I slept for almost 17 hours.

Staff Duty

Last night I had staff duty once again. Though as the officer on duty I am allowed to rest, I can never manage to get any good sleep. I spent almost the whole night sitting at my desk in the office either reading, surfing the internet, watching movies, or dozing in my chair. It tends to get quite cold in there at night and the above picture is of me sitting at my desk around 1:30 AM trying to stay warm. What is not visible is that underneath the fleece jacket I am wearing a t-shirt, wool sweater, and the ACU top, as well as wool gloves on my hands. Though I managed to stay warmer than any other time I've been on Staff Duty, I was still a bit cold at times. The Soldiers on duty laughed at me at first when they saw me wearing all that clothing, but when I went to check on them later on during the night they saying that they were freezing. Trying to adjust the thermostats does nothing.

Currently I am wide awake, but I'll probably crash shortly after the big game is over since I haven't done more than an hour of dozing in the past 30 hours.

Away Message

My friend Jon to requested that my away message on IM would, "bring a small tear to my [his] eye -- but not one that actually makes a tear fall out," and use "big words; colorful ones," so I came up with this away message:

"This Turquoise person is off to her Navajo White church small group where she will have a very Chartreuse, Magenta, Fuschia, and Aquamarine dinner and then a SandyBrown Bible Study.

Remember that time you spilled milk when you were a kid? It's okay to tear up at the memory."

I know it does not make any sense, but that's part of the charm. He liked it, so I guess that's all that really matters.

Venting

This may sound very weird, but sometimes, such as right now, I wish I could call someone on the phone and stay on the phone with them but not have either of us talk. No chit-chat, no catching up on how friends/relatives/whoever are doing, no talking about what's on our mind, nothing. Even better would be to have someone here in person and for them to put their arm around me and neither of us talk, just sit there and do nothing. I don't know why this is so appealing but it's not the first time I've wished it were possible.

An event with one of my Soldier's two days ago threw me for a loop and ever since then I've been an emotional wreck. It's like a huge weight suddenly descended upon me. Now all I can think about is going on leave in a week and hoping that I can hold myself together until then. I failed horribly at that today and it was quite embarrassing. Usually I can control my emotions pretty well, especially when in uniform. However, yesterday and today I wasn't in uniform at work due to a course, Applied Suicide Intervention Training (ASIST), I was attending. There was a portion of the course today where we role-played a scenario in front of the group, and my scenario didn't go too well. I was never able to connect with the person who was suicidal and so it was quite awkward throughout the whole thing. Afterwards I felt I'd failed in my scenario and the instructor saw that and so he came over to talk to me when he put everyone on break. He was telling me that I didn't fail and even did okay and even though I was trying with all my might to hold them back the tears started coming and for the life of me I could not stop them. Even though he said it was okay to cry and even said that he was glad to see me cry because it showed I really did care I felt extremely stupid and unprofessional sitting there crying and wished I could stop.

This weekend is a four day weekend for Veterans Day with Monday and Tuesday off, but tomorrow I am the Staff Duty Officer for both my Brigade and Battalion, so I'll be awake and at work from 8 am Saturday to 9 am Sunday and then mostly likely sleep all day Sunday. The person who has duty on Tuesday called me today and offered me $150 to take his shift, but I said no because I'm hoping that I'll figure out some way to relax on Monday and Tuesday and be able to go back to work a bit more refreshed on Wednesday.

Calvin's been his usual self recently. Yesterday my roommate's friends were over at the house and one of them brought her dog. I was home alone with the dogs and when I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth as I got ready for bed and out of the corner of my eye I saw Calvin run past the door with something in his mouth. From his behavior I could tell he was trying to hide something, so I immediately went to find him. Since I didn't see him in the living room I went straight to looking under Karen's bed, since that's Calvin's favorite hiding spot when he has something he knows he has something he's not supposed to have. He was under there chewing on a toy stuffed monkey that belonged to the other dog. When I tried to grab it from him he would scoot out the other side of the bed. After a couple failed attempts I climbed on top of the bed and a few seconds later I saw his nose and the monkey poke out from under the bed. He let go of the monkey just long enough for me to snatch it from him. It was rather funny to see only his snout poking out from under the bed sniffing around trying to locate the monkey while the rest of him was still hidden. After he realized the monkey was no longer there he slowly crawled out from under the bed with a guilty look on his face. There have been a couple other instances since then with him, but this post is already long enough.

Calvin...

Yesterday Jordan and Zack had Zuleka, George, and myself over to watch the Army vs Airforce football game on TV. I'd told Jordan that I'd bring dessert, since she was ordering the pizza and Zuleka said she'd bring something. Earlier in the week I'd made mini-cheesecakes to take to Bible Study, but had extra cookie dough shells that I hadn't used, so I planned to put them to use and take the mini-cheesecakes to the party, along with Sweet Crunchies (aka, peanut butter chewies). I'd placed the cookies in a plastic container with a lid on the kitchen counter and thought they were far enough back so that they were out of Calvin's reach. To my knowledge, he left them alone all week and so I thought nothing of leaving them out where they were.

Saturday morning I went out for a long fartleck run and during the run kept thinking about how grateful I was that the cookie crust portion of the cheesecakes were already done because I wouldn't have much time after my run to shower, bake, and then drive over the Jordan's before the game started. Unfortunatly, Calvin had other ideas.

When I got back to the house I was walking through the living room to get to the kitchen when glaced over on the floor and saw a plastic container on the ground that looked strikingly similar to the container that the cookie's had been in. Upon picking it up and seeing what appeared to be a couple of cookie crumbs in the bottom of it, I quickly peered into the kitchen and saw that the container on the counter was no longer there. Upon yelling his name, Calvin sauntered into the room with a stupid grin on his face and procceed to come up to me as if to say, "want to play?"

I did have to start from scratch with the mini-cheesecakes, but they are increadibly easy to make and it turned out that I could the sweet crunchies at the same time, so not too much time was lost.

Though he tests my patience more and more each day and I find myself sternly saying his name and telling him 'no' more than any other living creature I've ever come across, he is still lovable. I should probably go take him for a walk now or else he'll keep my roommate and I up all night like he did last night because he was moving around and making a ton of noise in the middle of the night.