Curses

Curses to you, internet, for being so amazing and full of crap. I figured I didn't have much to blog about because nothing was going on around me. LITTLE DID I KNOW, I could be blogging about the crap I do on the internet all the damn time. This should make for an interesting collage of crap for your eyes.

I should have waited til I scored a LITTLE higher,
now I'm a little embarrassed....

I would like to first, call some attention to this game called Bejeweled. I liked it, and I played it before, but in the last couple months, I have become AMAZING at it. I'm talking, EPIC PROFESSIONAL. There are still people on my friends list that score higher than me (I have this forsaken game as an app on Facebook), but I don't think any of them have put in the hours that I have. Actually, I don't think it's possible for anybody with a life and job to put in as many hours as I have. I don't even play it to get a high score anymore. I just play it CUZ I CAN. That's stupid, right? WRONG. I play it while my Cityville loads....yeah, I'm one of THOSE people. I play it while I'm watching a movie, while I'm talking to people, I actually will start a game after this paragraph to think about what else I want to talk about. Believe that. The thing I don't get is...how are they making money off this? I pay WAY too much for my internet here, but you know these A-Holes aren't forking out money to anybody else, and I don't pay for Facebook, so I don't get it. Whatever, I don't really care, actually. I still can't decide...if I ever meet the dude that invented/developed/created (WHATEVER) this game....I can't decide if I want to marry him or beat the shit out of him. We'll see what happens.

There is this new blog that I can NOT stop reading. Well, it's not new, but it's new to me. I think Sammy introduced me to it, and apparently everybody knew about it before I did. It's called Hyperbole and a Half and if you have never heard of it, or read any of it, you need to. Be warned: you may pee yourself from laughing so hard. I started from the first blog she posted and have been working forward in time. The link I am providing you with is one from 2009, but one of my favorites so far. Besides the fact that this chick is HILARIOUS, I would like to also state that she grew up in Idaho, so that may or may not explain a lot of things ahead of time. Enjoy!

And just to throw some random internet crap out there that I become absorbed with are sites like Damn You Auto Correct, it's sister site, Epic WTFs, Natalie Dee, and the As Seen On TV website is good for some entertainment (keep credit cards in a safe place). I also use Wikipedia a lot, even though, I KNOW I KNOW....it's not that reliable since anybody anywhere can put information on it. Nerdy, but I use Merriam-Webster a lot, and of course GOOGLE!!!!!!!

Unrelated to the internet. Happy Easter. (boring)....
Oh, and Melissa sent me a copy of SoulPancake...and that will probably spark some very interesting blogs, so stay tuned..........or not.

But you probably should check back every once in awhile....just in case I talk crap about you.

Or say something hilarious....

Or offer money to readers....ok, that won't ever happen, but just in case it does....

Eyes

Well, this is about the 4th time I've sat down and started this blog. I don't know if it's the fact that I can't concentrate or the fact that I don't WANT to concentrate. Thank you to Dustin, Sauce, and Tom's song "Why Not" I have a little inspiration :) Besides the fact that I have some very talented friends, I also have a very strong willed Mom #2, and an amazing son. For those of you that follow me here from Facebook, you probably know that I had a Noah day the other day. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about Noah, but some days are longer and harder than others.

The Noah story, whether you know it or not, here it is again :) I'll try to shorten it up a bit...

Noah and I met in High School. We hung out every once in awhile and partied at the same places every once in awhile, but we weren't really close. The beginning of 2004 we met again and we were totally crazy about each other instantly. We were dating for about 4 months, and he decided to go out East to work with his dad for a little bit and make some money. Soon after he left, my unit got called up for a deployment. We (the unit) have to go through what the Army calls an SRP (Soldier Readiness Process) which is where we get all our medical, financial....stuff taken care of. Well, before you go overseas, there are about 8billion shots you have to get, but before that, if you're a female, they give you a pregnancy test. And you'll never GUESS what happened....well, it was the pee-on-the-stick kind, and they "couldn't be sure" so they sent me down to get some bloodwork done. Well, that was it, they spun my blood and said "Congratulations" and I cried. I bawled actually. I was only 19, what the hell was I going to do with a KID!?!?

I think I told Noah about 2 days after I found out because I was so nervous about telling him over the phone. He took it better than I did. He didn't cry, anyway. Well, needless to say, it didn't take us long to get excited. Anyway, fast forward....Nick came into our lives and everything was amazing. He was the cutest, smartest, most awesome kid to exist. Noah was working night shifts and coming home and watching Nick while I went to work during the day. They would go to the park and feed the birds, they would feed the horses behind the house, they'd play at the playground. They had the best times together.

Slowly something happened to our relationship. I'm not going to say I was the easiest person to live with, but when Noah decided he didn't want to grow up, I made the choice of taking care of Nick over the choice of trying to take care of Nick AND Noah. I could only handle one at a time. Noah and I were together on and off for about 4 years. I saw sides of Noah that many people never got to experience. When he wanted to be, he was the most amazing father and boyfriend that anybody could have ever imagined.

September 2009 was one of the hardest months I have ever dealt with in my entire life. There are only 3 people that really know what happened that night, but here's how "they" say it did. It doesn't matter what article I read, they all piss me off. That link is new to me. First I've seen of it, and they all drive me insane. Make me read into it. I can't stand it sometimes. Sometimes it takes everything in my being just to close all browsers and stop obsessing.... Back to THEN....Nick wasn't even 5 yet when his dad was killed....or should I say, when his dad died. I don't know if it was better or worse that he didn't get it. He didn't know the pain of death, because his idea of "death" was that of video games where you just come back. The pain he felt was looking around and seeing his mama, his grandmas, and everybody he knew crying. For days.

From Noah, I have the most amazing son anybody could ask for. I get to see Noah every time Nick gives me the NoahScowl, every time he looks at me (he definately got his daddy's eyes) in general, and you'd be surprised the little stuff that he does that is just like his dad. Noah also connected me with an amazing family that I couldn't be more proud to be a part of. Noah's whole family has been just amazing to Nick and I. They are the greatest people. Yvonne is my Mom #2.

Noah and I may not have been together when he died, and we may not have always agreed or been the best of friends, but when it comes down to it....we loved each other. I loved him for the dad he was, the dad he was going to be, the man he dreamt of being, the man he was, and the dreams he had. So, this one, is for you Noah Anthony Hopper. We love you. We miss you like crazy. XOXOXO

A-Hole

There has been an article that has been brought up that I have decided I wanted to mention. There is an article on the Rolling Stone website about what has come to be known as "The Kill Team". You can read the article for yourself, although it may take you a LONG time. It's about 8 pages long, with some videos. The article is about a platoon of infantry guys part of the Stryker Brigade. I read most of it, but didn't have time (during that sitting) to read the whole thing. It was a couple days ago that I started reading it, and I went to read the rest today and I couldn't. For the last couple days, I have been thinking about the article, and talked about it to a couple people, but I also had a pretty disturbing nightmare about the shit I read. You see, the article is about this platoon that is/was under investigation for some....more than disturbing actions, photos, videos...and such.

The gist of it is that they shot locals for fun. There are other things that the article covers, but that's the main idea. I have all these notes that I took while I was reading that I wanted to touch on, but I...I don't even know. It just makes me sick and mad. Ok, the article (if it can even be referred to as such, being as long as it is) made me mad in a lot of parts. I'm already getting sick of typing the word "article" so I'm going to now refer to it as  the A-hole. The A-hole talks about these guys that all get high and dream of killing local nationals in Afghanistan. I would like to start off stating the obvious (that apparently isn't obvious to all) which is...these guys may be wearing the uniform, but everything they said and did was against what wearing this uniform means. They are heartless animals that somehow slipped through too many cracks in the system.

I know that being in a war zone effects many people different ways, but there are systems in place that are put there to protect people, whether that be soldiers, third country nationals, and everybody else. As other systems, there are cracks and there can be people that slip through. This A-hole touches on that specifically; the fact that all this stuff happened and nobody stopped them. I want to put in my two cents, saying that some of the stuff that is said to have happened, I don't believe. I just think that some of the stuff that had supposedly happened would have raised flags when it didn't. BLAH!

I don't know. I guess I don't really wanna talk about this as much as I wanted to. It just pisses me off. I am pissed off at those guys for being total douchebags, and for making people in the military look like assholes. We aren't all assholes. On that note, I would like to say that, through this deployment, I have met some amazing people. They say that when you are deployed with people, they become your other family. I didn't really understand until now. Besides the obvious factors of living together, sharing things, working together, and just seeing each other on a daily basis, there are the other factors like the emotional connections and the friendships that are created. When I was first assigned to this unit, I will admit, I was kind of bummed because I didn't know anybody. Now I feel very lucky to have met these people that I may not have ever met otherwise. There are so many people here that I don't doubt would have my back, and whether they know it or not, I would have theirs. And now it's late and I'm afraid I'm not making sense. Off we go.