Things I think about while I workout

News from Washington State: Mason is alive. He's only been there since Thursday, and hasn't done too much yet, but the fun week of academics starts tomorrow and then he'll be in the field Sunday through Friday.

While Mason has been gone I've been sticking to my eat healthy, workout plan. I was so EXCITED because I went to a friends Mardi Gras party last night and was able to wear an outfit that I haven't fit into in a looooooooong time. I guess the whole "the more pain, the more gain
thing actually works...since Mason isn't at the gym with me, I have lots of thinking time...that and avoiding looking at the clock. I must admit that Katy Perry, Rhianna, and yes, even Britney have done their fair share of pusing me past my quitting point too. Working out has given me that time to escape into my mind, however.

I was thinking today about how military spouses just have this instant bond. Whether you like all the spouses you meet, or not, you have instant empathy for each others situations. Right now, a lot of the guys from Mason's class are gone, so many of the wives are husbandless while they are TDY. It's kind of funny when you start talking and realize that even though we're all independent women, we still do those same things when our husbands are gone. Examples: close the bedroom door at night, leave the bathroom door open, lock all doors and windows always, leave out hair accessories, eat way less food, cry at night, talk to yourself frequently...the life of a military spouse when your loved one TDY or deployed. All that being said, it really makes you appreciate your spouse. All the stupid arguments about doing dishes, or laundry, and who should do this or that, seem so unimportant. I'd trade my husband for a stack of dirty dishes anytime. I really give Army wives so much credit- their husbands are usually gone for a year or more. So far, the Air Force just predicts 4-6 month deployments for B-52 pilots. Don't get me wrong-that sucks- but it's far better than a year.

All that being said, I read the most ridiculous magazine article the other day, in my opinion. It was an article that said, men are attracted to women who act like b*tches. Now ask yourself, do you think this makes sense? I know that when I'm crabby or acting snotty Mason wants to be as far away from me as possible. I don't like to be around crabby, b*tchy people, so why would my husband think it was attractive. The article continued on to imply that women who are self-confident are often b*tches. I just sort of dropped my mouth when I read this, since I know that personally it's taken me a long time to be self-confident and have higher self-esteem and I think it makes me nicer since I'm not always mad with myself...I hope that young women don't take all the advice they read on the shelves these days.

Love at First Woof

Last night, Mason and I decided to go out to eat and as we were pulling out of the driveway a little white, "Sophie," walked out from under the car. There was no apparent owner around, so we locked her in our kitchen and discussed what to do at dinner. We stopped to get some dog food, and kept her over night. We went for a walk but no one noticed her. She didn't have any id except for her rabies tag and name tag but with no numbers. Today after school I took her out walking while I posted "Found Dog" posters. Some kids in the park saw her and as it turned out they had found the same dog earlier in the day yesterday. A girl then came running up from behind and said she knew where the dog lived. The house was almost our backyard neighbor, but a few houses down. They were happy to have her back. I really liked having a dog around, but Mason said he better not return home to see the dog still there...

Speaking of Mason, he was off this morning (at 530) to Washington via several other cities. I haven't gotten any phone calls, but received a text message saying that he paid $3.50 for a burger at a airport McDonald's, and he could believe how airports have turned into malls.

LIfe in the fast lane

Mason's been home for a week and a half now and we've been having a great time together! When Mason got home from water survival training we had a great weekend. The ENJJPT Around the World party was on the 7th. All the NATO nations have food and beverages from their country. Mason really liked these meatballs and peanut sauce from the Netherlands, and I of course couldn't get enough of the delicious Italian food.

Last week, Mason took me to Olive Garden for an early birthday/Valentine's Day dinner. We figured going out on a Thursday would be better than going out on a Saturday night, more or less Valentine's Day. Mason will be gone for my birthday, so we had a great time. To top it all off Mason surprised me with a new i-pod, mine broke, AND he made a delicious chocolate cake (although I think that was to curb his chocolate craving.) I must say Mason was pretty cute baking/decorating a cake.

Despite all the amazingly yummy food in the last few weeks, Mason and I have been working REALLY hard towards our losing weight efforts. We've been very strict about going to the gym at least 5x a week, for at least an hour, and doing our ab routine everyday. It's really hard somedays, but I'm proud of both of us for sticking with it.

Mason leaves on Thursday morning for land survival. We talked to a friend today who just got back and said it wasn't too bad, except that there's so much snow in Washington right now, that they had to hike 60 degree banks up a mountain in snow shoes. Mason will write lots when he gets back, but for now, he'll do some parachute training and academics the first week. The second week they will spend in the field doing most of the training and when they return they go into POW and resistance training. Don't worry, they're only allowed to break one finger...

Meanwhile, my time at school is flying by. On Friday, we had a Valentine's Day party and the kids were hyped! We tried to make it a healthy breakfast, but parents brought lots of cupcakes and sugar. It made me glad that we only had a half day of school. We have state testing coming up in three weeks, which I'm not looking forward to, but I'm hoping that my kids are feeling more prepared. I'm really excited because next week, as a combined lesson we're going to play "Are you Smarter than a 5th grader" with our 3rd-5th graders. It's going to be lots of fun (hopefully.)

The weather here has been very up and down. One day it's 80 and the next it's 30. We're not quite sure if we should put our winter clothes away yet, but the days where is is nice and warm makes us really enjoy the outdoors. On a negative note, they cut down the beautiful tree in our backyard, but on the sameday my daffodils bloomed. A nice little sign from above.

canopyvisormaskseatkitlpufourlinesteerpreparerelease

Mason reporting in here. Haven't posted much since pilot training finished because life has been pretty boring. At ENJJPT, there's a lot of BIT (Break In Training) students waiting around here for their follow-on training to open up. The fighters in particular are really backed up. The guy in our class who got an F-16 has no dates for training and is expecting to be here for at least a year before he moves on to the next phase of training. For everyone stuck in that spot, we're supposed to get a certain amount of currency rides in a T-38 here at Sheppard to make sure we don't get too out of it. Unfortunately for me, since there's so many fighter guys waiting around, they get the focus for the BIT currency program. If we weren't at ENJJPT where everything is based on fighter pilots, it probably wouldn't be a big deal. But since we are here, anyone who isn't going to a fighter basically gets put on the back burner and we're not actually in the BIT program. We're free to go in and fish around for open seats in the T-38, T-6, or T-37, but it requires a lot of lucky timing or getting good connections in those flights. So because I hate sitting around all day waiting for something to possibly open up, I just don't go in that often. I probably go in once every 2-3 days just to check my email and take care of paperwork stuff.

But last week, I got to go to water survival training at Pensacola Naval Air Station, Florida. It was only three days long (plus 2 travel days). I was hoping it would be nice hot weather for jumping into the ocean, but of course we had a cold spell go through right for our three days. They wouldn't let us do the water activities unless it was over like 36 degrees windchill or something but we were pretty much right at that limit a lot so we only spent a little time waiting for the temp to rise in the morning. I think they said the water temp was actually like 55 degrees. To keep toasty, we wore wet suits and these big yellow survival suits that looked like a firefighter uniform. And on top of that, we wore a parachute harness with a life preserver attached. It was pretty uncomfortable but it wasn't too bad for staying warm in the water.

Most of the training was pretty much all about getting comfortable with the sort of equipment we would have with us if we actually did eject (or jump out the door for all the non-ejector folk) over the ocean. This was my first time swimming in salt water so I was pretty surprised how gross that was. Getting water in your mouth at Lake Michigan is kind of icky but sea water is way worse. We got to practice getting out from be entangled in a parachute canopy in the water, setting up 20-man life rafts, 1-man life rafts, going through our post-ejection checklists, and what to do if you're getting dragged through the water by your parachute. The two coolest parts were parasailing and the helo-rescue.

For parasailing, we launched off one of their bigger ships and then were towed until about 300-500 feet, then released. The fall down was pretty short (at least for me) so I barely got through my checklist before hitting the water. And then we had to inflate our raft and basically just hang out in it for an hour or so to get a feel for how life alone in the water is. For anyone going, I highly recommend packing some sort of beef jerky or sausage sticks for lunch that day. It's basically already water-proofed and is pretty tasty. My poptarts stayed dry in a plastic bag, but they got mushed up pretty bad in the whole parasailing process. They took us out in a larger portion of the bay for all this, but we could still see land and since there were so many of us, you didn't really feel too isolated. The instructors told us a lot of stories of all the sharks and other sealife they get out there, but I didn't see anything. Apparantely, it's a lot worse in the summer. I actually felt pretty comfortable bobbing around in the water, but I guess I would have felt differently if a shark bumped into the bottom of my raft (as they've had happen before).

The other really fun part was practicing getting rescued by a helicopter. They demonstrated how to vector the helicopter in to your spot and giving signals. Then we all got dumped in the water in a long line and one by one, the helicopter would hover overhead, drop down a line, we would hook ourselves up, and then it would lift us out of the water and drop us back in. The water spray from the prop was pretty intense since it feels like a lot of little ice pellets hitting your face, but apparantely there's other helicopters that are a lot worse than what we had (HH-60). Plus there wasn't really any waves so that made it a lot easier.
(This wasn't actually us, but same idea)
A couple guys there got waterproof cameras so I'll get some actual pictures up eventually. There were about 45 people in our class there, a little more than half were officers. About 15 were pilots, the rest of the officers were navigators and electronic weapons officers. Of those 15, there was only one fighter pilot and three bomber pilots (including me). I got to meet four B-52 EWOs who will probably be in my class at Barksdale. My point in saying all those numbers is just that it's interesting to get out of the ENJJPT world and see what the real ratios are with all the heavy pilots out there and the amount of aircrew walking around in flight suits who aren't pilots (EWOs, Navs, crew chiefs, flight nurses, etc).

While I was away, Ellen was pumpin it up at the gym everyday. I came home and our refrigerator was full of numbered healthy food. She's starting to get anxious about having to leave her kids at school and start another job search. Standardized test season seems to be year-round in Texas so she's getting ready to administer those. And today, she's having another cookie-making marathon for the Around The World party that ENJJPT holds each year with food from all over. We're not really sure what an "American cookie" is supposed to be but I'm sure everyone will eat them anyways.

Next up for me- land survival / SERE (Survival Evasion Resistance Escape) training at Fairchild AFB, Washington. I leave around the 19th and get back mid-March.