Three folks answered the call yesterday to support 3rd BN 3rd Marines. I really appreciate your commitment to these Marines. Paypal hangs onto the funds for a few days before they are released into my account so I'll contact those who's generosity was so gratefully recieved and let you know the details. I wasn't sure about mentioning you here without permission. I'll post more about where they are and what they might like tomorrow. Sarah, thanks for offering to help dub TV. Yes, I don't think they mind commercials, at least my Marines didn't last deployment. Anything that smacks of home... (Picture:LCpl Samuel Mincey, one of my former adoptees from Kilo Co, 3rd BN 3rd Marines, on patrol in Karmah Iraq 2007)

Speaking of home, I drove through the town I lived in while in high school last night. Having attended 18 schools growing up. Yes. 1-8. No typo-- this town was special in that the last 3.5 years of growing up, we stayed in one place. It became the first place I would call home with a straight face.

Alone for the daytrip, I also found myself driving past the house we lived in to see that time had carried it away and replaced it with a new one. As I slowly rolled through the neighborhood instigating at least one or two neighborhood watch entries I am sure, I also found my spot. Every angst ridden, painfully intense teenager has such a place. (whom am I kidding I still have these spots...remenber the picture in my old header?)

My thinking spot,

if you will,

unlike my home,

looked exactly the same.

Had I had the time

I would have climbed up

on my perch

out over the water

to draw a few breaths,

but there was no time to be had.

It was here I

planned the demise of siblings,

went to cry unabashedly,

laugh hysterically,

plot vengefully,

and be dumped by a very short-sighted Senior,

It's where I shredded my first university acceptance letter, and found Sanctuary after I came home from school to find very angry parents asking why said university had called to offer an applicant they rejected a last minute scholarship. So. completely.busted.

It's where I often

journaled,

read

and sometimes just disappeared for an afternoon away from adolescent trials and tribulations to count the ripples stones made as I dropped them into the water.

I even remember sometimes wondering what it would be like when I came back one day all grown up to see, if my tree was still there. Moving so often, I often made promises to the child I was in each place to come back and claim a particular space; to acknowledge my history and somehow give it a credibility hard won with so few roots ever setting deep into any particular soil.

Getting out of my SUV and walking down the creekbed was like opening an old box full of letters and keepsakes kept on a shelf for twenty odd years. Memories rustled in the feel of the grass under my feet, the smell of the creek, in the echos of calls to supper brought to life in the muffled sounds of children playing in a nearby yard. It was even in the feel of the air about to bring rain like all Mays then seemed to do growing up along Oyster Creek .

Clear thoughts escaped me.

Clarity came from senses gifting me with a subtle, fleeting poignancy.

Taking a coastal road back, all the same senses were useless save sight later that evening. The night wrapped around my car in an inky fog shrouding and pulling back with it the evening's reverie as I drove towards home.

I haven't been couponing in earnest the last couple of months. I got behind and did some shops, but nothing fancy. At some point, if you are heavy into couponing and slack off, you get a little nervous about going in for a big shop wondering if you still have your chops...

muwhahaha...

I spent fifty seven cents at Target today. Fifty seven pennies man!!! The poor checker was nervous because it was obvious I had more coupons than the order was going to take. I told her to just stop before it zeroed out so her machine didn't lock up and that would be fine. Boy was she relieved! I think she thought I was looking for cash back...

Nope.
I'm not greedy.
Course I'll want those extra coupons back mind you...

What did I buy?

I thought you might ask:

24 bottles of Visine
10 energy bars
4 quarts of strawberries and raspberries
2 double paks of Listerine
12 bars of soap
10 boxes of bandaids
6 8 oz bottles of Purell

When the shops are this good I always find myself wondering how I can fall off the wagon and not shop like this all the time? Couponing is like riding a bike. You never forget how to do it really...but you don't know that until you get back on. It's a kind of coupon amnesia followed by physical therapy. The swift self kick in the pants you give yourself for loosing focus is the physical therapy part.

It's a shame that I get such a rush out of building a deal.
I remember when rushes came from hitting Dime Draft Night at the Metro, working your list of tasks for Sorority Hell Night (in your face Pledge Mom...still wonder how I did it huh??!!?), field training execises in a Lousiana swamp, or the guy you were interested in finally freaking calling for crying out loud...oh well.

I'm 40 now.
Times have changed.
I'm going back tomorrow for my consumer induced rush and will try not to linger over the fact that it's all just kinda sad really. None of the aforementioned BS being any sadder of course than the present.

Oh! A big bonus is that all of this stuff except for the berries is really useful to our military folks about now. See? When the buzz wears off I can count on a sense of service anyway.

Okay still kinda sad comparatively speaking.

Crossfit
I was in a little bit of a hurry what with all the shopping today, Girl Scouts and the boys PT class-- so when I came home between checking email, supervising the cleaning and vacuuming the car and changing for the gym I made the mistake of wearing some yoga pants which went on a little too easy, but I didn't pay enough attention at the time.

Here's the thing:

The WOD (workout of the day) was

880 run for warm up

40, 30,20 and finally 10 sets of

situps

wallballs (maniacal squats with a ball you throw over your head on the way up and catch on the way down at the end of your squat

Push press (barbells over head in rapid succession)

Step ups/Box jumps (think tall box you either step up and down on or jump up on and land two footed)

This particular exercise is a mental thing for me at the moment. If youbox jump and fall your shins will catch on the edge of this big wooden box...OWIE!!!...I have done this before...hence my being leery of this stupid box or rather my legs being leery. There are times when I swear I hear them tell my brain..."Wait, Wait! We're REAAAAAAAALLY tired right now are you sure you want us to jump up...seriously? Tell you what, Brain, we'll jump right on up there if you promise to short circuit the writhing agony type pain response if we give out and hit the edge of this box here. What do you say?"

No luck, mostly you just stand there and tell yourself to jump and your legs pretend they are deaf and can't hear a damn thing. I'm all about the step ups at this point. Though I think the trainers may be on to me, because while I have had my workouts scaled for the last month...today the trainers upped both weight and repetition...I may have to contend with jumping soon...ack.

Now.
Throw into all this mind screwing the realization the pants you are wearing are getting looser and looser as the workout goes on.

Paint yourself a picture.

Hope in the gym with 20 other sweaty harworking folks,

throwing her arms over her head,
going into repeated squats,
stepping up onto a high box

Repeat....oh say....
100 times!!!

I could not begin to fathom the importance of the right gym wear until I began Crossfit. I usually just throw on anything. As a matter of fact the clothes I generally wear is the stuff I disappear into here and in the gym. Out of habit, I have always worn my clothes too big...only now...well stuff's not staying on me so well. I think a lot of mamas wear stuff that keeps them flying under the radar. I know I have always subscribed to this. The problem with my philosophy is if I keep wearing this big stuff under the radar will be replaced by all over the radar. I'll be straining to press weights over my head and my pants will be down around my ankles...

Yup I think someone might notice.

Sigh.

It's going to sound strange, but I hate shopping. I like stocking the house with food and supplies, but I'd rather eat dirt than shop for clothes--well relatively clean dirt anyway and I'd need some sort of clean dirt certification.

Where was I again?
Oh yes.
Shopping.
That I'd rather eat dirt than shop pretty much sums it up.