Marissa Turner

The great thing about living on an Army post is that I don’t have to take care of a bloody thing aside from my own little backyard.  The ‘courtyard’ out front?  Mowed by someone else.  Leaves blowing all over the driveway and piling up against the walls?  Blown away by someone else.  I don’t even have to haul away yard clippings, I just rake them out of my fenced in yard and someone else deals with it.  It’s very nice actually.

Until the leaf blowing takes place right outside my bedroom window (I just love living on the ground floor) and sends Thunder Butt into a frenzy of “must protect teh human” and she stands on me to bark at the maintenance worker outside the bedroom window.  (On a side note, living on the ground floor is also why I have thick curtains on my bedroom window). 

I may or may not be planning the fictional death of a maintenance worker today.  Death by leaf blower.  It’ll be great.

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I’ve been a bit down lately. Not depressed, as I’m over it now, but the whole holiday weekend thing, when I’ve no close family around, is a bit of a pain in the ass. Ninety percent of everything is set up for family or couples. Well, right now, it’s just me and the dog, and last time I checked, they don’t allow dogs in movie theatres, stores, or restaurants.

So, I was pissy. Upset, lonely, and cranky over the whole mess. I’m better now.

So much better that I’m writing. Granted, part of that writing meant I slaughtered 1800 words in my current manuscript, but still, it’s writing. And the remaining words are good. I think they’re good anyway.

And I’ve been going a little nuts with the whole reading thing.  Shelly Laurenston (her Magnus Pack books), Melissa Marr (her free short STOPPING TIME), Carrie Vaughn (VOICES OF DRAGONS), Maggie Stiefvater (SHIVER), and Patricia Briggs (SILVER BORNE) just to name a few. My brain is very happy to be stuffed with books- my body is not happy that all this reading is keeping me up late. Like not going to bed until after 0400 up late. I’m working on getting better.

Now, for writing and studying. I had put off taking my national certification until June, but I’m thinking of pushing that time frame up for next month. Which means I actually have to do the studying instead of skimming the book and hoping I retain what I just read.

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Dracula says it best.  Thank you Mrs. Meyer, for taking vampires down that final peg and making them as scary as a salted slug.

I realized last night, rather belatedly, that I live in an area that is more commune for horny (and crude) twenty year old boys than city.  How did I figure this out?  Simple: I had one prove that some men truly are incapable of mature thought processes.

I was standing in line to pay and this guy, and if he was twenty-one I’ll eat Thunder Butt’s car harness, comes up to me and asks “do I know you?”  I say no and go back to waiting.  Ignoring people is a great way to get them to leave you alone.  “No, really, I think I know you.”  I tell him, again, that we don’t know each other.  “Didn’t I have my dick in your mouth last week?”  And here is where my brain shuts off and Psycho Bitch comes out to play. 

I told him that no part of his body had been anywhere near any part of my body, and then asked him how he knew I wasn’t some E-7.  Or, better yet, an Officer.  How’d he know I wouldn’t have him busted so low he’d have to salute Rocky during the morning run?

And I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts that the kid was an E-fuzzy and thought that made him BMOC. 

The more men I meet, the more I like my dog.

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Today is Veteran’s Day.  And I’m surrounded by them.  But I don’t know any of them, aside from the creepy one who I threatened to shank last week if he snuck up on me again.  (As a side note, if you don’t know someone well enough to call them by their first name, then why the hell would you think you know them well enough to ’sneak hug’ them without getting stabbed, shot, kicked in the balls, or the cops called on you?)  Moving on, today is a day to thank them for their service.  And perhaps to by the spouse of a deployed soldier that drink they probably really need by now.

I like Barefoot Moscato wine in case anyone is interested.

And there is a reason I go after Sherrilyn Kenyon books the way an crackhead goes after a fresh rock:

He snorted. “Little late for that now. I don’t think an ‘oops, my bad, my weapon accidentally misfired two dozen rounds’ will work to get me out of this.” He cursed as his link started buzzing.

Firing another round, he answered it. “Hi, Mom… yes, I know my heart rate’s dangerously elevated.” He ducked a blast that almost pinned his head to the wall. “That sound? I’m being shot at, Ma. Gotta go now. Love you much. Hugs and kisses.” He tapped his ear to close the channel. “Where the hell’s Sway?”

That’s from an excerpt she posted on FB from BORN OF ICE, the third in her League series.  I snorked coffee up my nose at the whole ’someone is trying to kill me right now Mom, I’ll call ya back’ attitude.

And that is also why I think it’s a bad idea for soldiers to have cell phones in a war zone- or at least cell phones that their wives/husbands can call.  Because I’ve met a lot of spouses who’d call the soldier just to let them know the cat farted and it could end up being very, very bad. 

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It’s all you can do to keep from hiding in a closet and pretending everything is fine.

The massacre at Fort Hood yesterday has left me both pissed off, and terrified.  Pissed off because one of our soldiers turned his weapon on men he should have seen as family.  I’ll freely admit I don’t like every soldier I’ve ever met.  There are some I’d like to strap naked to a fire ant hill.  But we’re family- every military wife knows how hard a deployment can be.  Every soldier knows that, more often than not, he won’t be home for holidays or birthdays or anniversaries.  Terrified because if it happened there, it can happen anywhere.

We’re supposed to be safe on post.  We have to come through armed guards every time we “come back from the world” of Wal-Mart and sit down restaurants.  We shouldn’t have to be afraid of the people we work with, live beside, or see every day at the commissary or the post office or the PX.

We’re not supposed to be afraid of one another.

I’m not going to scream terrorist, or say that the shooter was working for Bin Laden.  I believe he was a coward who would rather spend the rest of his days in prison than do the job he signed up for.  The military deploys to dangerous territory.  It always has.  If he had a problem with it, he could have found another job in a ’safe’ environment.  He could have tendered his resignation, stating why he wanted out.  No promise it would have been accepted, but it was a better option than killing innocent people.

He could have gone AWOL and hidden in the sewers of NYC, there are many things he could have done differently. 

If he hadn’t killed those people, if he’d resigned or said “I can’t do it” he’d have been removed from the service.  Cowardice really doesn’t belong here. 

He decided that killing innocent people was better than serving his country.   

Sadly, he’s not the only military member who would sham out of a deployment.  A soldier I know, not very well mind you, was bragging to me that he’s never deployed.  He was in another branch of the service before joining the Army, so his combined military experience is something like eight years.  And he’s NEVER deployed.  Not even to Korea, which is a rather safe area most the time.

He is proud of the fact he’s never ‘been over there’.   

It’s people like him that make me sick.   

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Romance books are big chunk of what people read.  No joke- one of the biggest markets out there is for romance, any romance, books.

And when you add military to the romance, it should be a whiz-bang of a best seller, right?  Uniforms, honor, duty, and the whole hero complex does it for most women.  We like the idea of an alpha male, even if we know we’d bash his head in with a stoneware baking sheet in real life.

Right up until it’s proven without a doubt that the author has never been part of the military, nor did they bother doing their research.  Sarah Frantz had the same thoughts- but she was actually part of the military vs. just being married to it.

The part about the platoon sergeant who not only got called ’sir’ by a LT, but bossed said LT around, had me laughing so hard I spilled coffee across my keyboard.  Which has since been drained, cleaned, and put back together.  My husband will never know.

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At least my computer baby.

D and C left yesterday to go to his new duty station in lovely Kentucky, and they took the kids with them.  I told them they could go, but the kids had to stay with me.  Obviously, it didn’t work.

I feel like I’m missing a limb. 

Even when C went to Iraq and D to Germany, I knew they were coming back.  And they did, only a mile and a half down the road, I walked there a few times with Thunder Butt.  Just two stop signs and a left, and I was there. 

Took me less than 30 minutes to see them if I went on foot.  Ten if I went by car (yes, ten minutes, because traffic rules are insane on post).

Now they’re ten hours away. 

I don’t know if the change would be so glaringly apparent if they hadn’t been staying here.  I got used to stepping over/around Attila during the day.  Little J. stealing pens.  Threatening to do nasty things to C’s boots if he didn’t get out of the bathroom so I could use it (really, 4 people with only 1 bathroom, it got a little tense around here).  D and I sitting on the sofa at night, knitting and watching television.  And hearing Attila come into my room in the mornings, “Issa Issa!” and D or C chasing him out of my room to let me sleep because they know I tend to wake up like a bear.  They forgot that you cannot wake up in a bad mood when you get Attila love.

Now, it’s just me and Thunder Butt again. 

It’s very hard to find a true friend in the Army.  But, at least we had a few years together before the Army moved them away.

And there’s always email and cell phones and chats.

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Or is that there?

Either way, it’s Mad Hatter Day.

Housing showed up today, about .2 seconds after I’d gotten out of bed, to fix the windows.  Which is wonderful.  But he’s broken all the windows off their runners (not broken, I’m assuming they were able to come off, but it sounded like he broke them) and is resealing the area around them.  I’ve got Attila today, and he keeps trying to let Thunder Butt back in the house, so she can eat the housing man.  It’s a battle of the wills, and he’s young enough that ‘give up’ isn’t part of his speech.

Long as I keep him away from my sewing machine, we’re good.

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“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life…You give them a piece of you. They didn’t ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn’t your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like ‘maybe we should be just friends’ turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It’s a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.”
Neil Gaiman

The post office has gotten horribly expensive.  Housing still hasn’t called about my windows.  Frontline has gotten expensive- half the supply for the same cost.  Maybe I can just dunk Thunder Butt in vinegar once every two weeks… 

Thank Bob for escapism, or I’d be losing my mind. 

And escapism looks something like this-

D: I share everything Rissa.  Everything but my Kettle Cooked!

Me: Yeah, I can borrow the car, the kids, the husband, just not the chips!

D: Exactly!

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My window problems are becoming an epic saga of errors.  The man who was supposed to fix them didn’t show up until 1140 yesterday (it wasn’t yet noon!).  He looked at them, and at 1150 he said “I’ll come back after lunch”. 

Now, before I go on, how long is lunch for those people who are able to leave the office and eat?  About a hour, right?  Well, apparently, the housing workers get a 3.5 hour lunch break, because that guy didn’t come back here until after 1500.  And he was here just long enough to say “I won’t fix them today.  I’ll be back sometime this week to work on them, but it won’t be tomorrow {well, today now} but it will be before Friday!”  Which is when my head exploded all over the room.

What if I was working right now?  What if I had classes I had to do?  Or doctor’s appointments?  So, I’m calling housing again today and setting up an actual appointment with the head honcho of window sealing. 

At least I can take my frustrations in fiction.  High body counts are good, right?

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