Will wonders never cease...

Placentophagy? Really? I mean, it's fascinating but what is the chemical/biomedical basis to believe that it actually fights post-partum depression?

He's gone, oh-wha, oh-wha...

CPT Dick took off today for training. He should be back sometime before September. Don't really have a clue when because there is a big ol' rumor afoot that their planned fall deployment may be pushed back until early next year. If it is, they won't have to train quite as long.

Now, some of you may be thinking, "A postponed deployment! That's great! What wonderful news! He won't have to leave so soon!" And you'd be right on that front. It is a good thing. A few more months with him around is something I would appreciate.

But I have to be honest, the thought just depresses me. The rumors just totally depress me. One, because as of now, they are only rumors and so only serve to get the hopes up of the soldiers and families in our unit. If they don't come to pass, well, that's a whole lotta shit to clean up.

(I won't mention how that at hearing the rumor, my mother-in-law sent me a long-winded email about how she's so grateful because she hopes the war will be over by the spring and CPT Dick will never have to return. And I know that she will now send me newsclippings and links with anything that might suggest the war is ending. She did this through his entire first deployment and I have to tell you, it's the most annoying thing ever).

Two, I'm the kind of person who doesn't like to fixate on ripping off the band-aid. I don't want to spend too long thinking about it and agonizing over any potential pain. I want to just get it over with. And with a deployment of 15-18 months in our future, I want it to start so that we'll be that much closer to it ending. Does that make any sense?

I want him to go so he'll be back that much sooner.

And finally, I'm just tired of the Army jerking us around. I know it's not being done to me personally. I don't even register on the DoD's radar. But after our unit deactivation and all of the nonsense surrounding that, I just want the facts. No conjecture. No maybes. No rumors. The facts. I want a date. I want to put it on my calendar. And I want to be able to expect that my husband will leave on or at least somewhere right around that date so I can make my own plans.

Ridiculous, no?

Better than I thought it would be.

How many things in life can you honestly say are worth the wait? That actually manage to compare to the anticipation?

The new Harry Potter actually is. It's well done, true to the first six books and leaves a satisfying ending to Harry's story.

But now that the wait is over, the book is purchased and read, I am sort of bereft at the idea that there will be no more. Harry's story has come to an end, my first real voyage into a pop culture phenomenon is finished, and I wonder what will come next. I'm guessing it will be something that Munchkin brings to my life (Wiggles? Barney? Dora and Diego? God help me).

But in some ways, as long as the craze delivers, I can't wait.

One heck of a woman (and even more mascara) goes to rest.

Tammy Faye Messner (formerly Tammy Faye Bakker) lost her battle with cancer.

I can't tell you why, exactly, but I'm sure going to miss her. She was a little on the nutty side but always seemed like she was a genuine and warm person.

Bless you, Tammy Faye. I hope that you've found the heaven of which you always dreamed.

Unpacked.

After focusing on it for a few straight days, we are officially unpacked! The missing/broken tally wasn't too bad this time around. We are only missing two shelves from an old, crappy IKEA bookshelf and CPT Dick's set of poker chips. And one framed map had the glass and frame broken. Pretty darn good, really.

Of course, CPT Dick is brokenhearted about the chips and thinks I should file a claim for their $40 value. Ummm, no.

I know some folks file a claim after each move, noting each ding, dent and scratch. It can be lucrative if you have patience for the claims process.

After our last move, where our couch's frame was broken, they lost the legs to the dining room table, and they gouged my antique hope chest, I did file a claim. But boy, did they take their pound of flesh in the process. Between finding receipts, old credit card statements, taking photos of the broken items and visiting the claims office no less than 8 times, we got a check. But the check was not nearly in the amount that we should have gotten.

Case in point. My dining room table was fairly new and although not the best out there, relatively expensive. I splurged a little because, you know, I expected to use that table for the next 20 years or so. And because of that plan, I wanted the same legs back. So I called the store where I bought the table and found that I could special order the legs for ~$80/per leg. They would be the same legs, same finish, with the same trim and carving as the table. Perfect match.

Well, the claims office thought my request for matching legs was ridiculous. How dare I ask for legs that match my nice, newish table?! What the hell was I thinking? I'm an Army wife. If I chose to waste my money in a store that was not the PX, that was my own folly. And as such, they determined that I could get plain, generic legs in a finish that looked like it might almost match for $20/leg.

To add insult to injury, they then reduced that amount further with their standard depreciation formula. I had owned the table for two years. No matter that it was still perfect. You know, minus the legs and all. According to their calculations, it wasn't worth what I paid for it, so I couldn't have the full amount for the legs.

I fought it. I fought it hard. But I lost. And I took that dinky amount they gave me and bought the right legs for the table, paying most of it out of my own pocket. And being the cheap, frugal bitch that I am, it killed me a little inside to do so.

So you'll understand why I ain't gonna go to the mattresses over some silly poker chips. It just ain't worth my time.

Climbing back on the wagon.

Between the move, the stress before and after, the errands, the cleaning, the lack of kitchen supplies and damn near any other excuse I could think of, I've been eating like total and complete crap. I am literally horrified about just what and how much junk food I've put in my body these last few weeks.

I call it the PCS diet.

Have no dishes in the house? Spending hours on post doing inprocessing and errands? Got a cranky boy? Hit Burger King. Easy as pie. Which, if McDonald's had the government contract, I would have ordered along with my chicken sandwich, fries and large cola. And hey, Popeye's has those biscuits. Just one or two will tide me over until I can get home to cook. And with all the stress, I deserve an ice cream. Let me just stop at the Baskin Robbins for a quick cone. And let's not talk about the snacking as I packed or cleaned or those extra couple of glasses of wine on those nights where I thought I just might go crazy without a little buzz. Oh no.

I'm afraid to even try to calculate those calories. I know it was far more than it should be. And with all the waiting around at the house from 8am until 5pm for the cable man and running around post, I haven't made it to the gym in weeks.

What gets me is that I know better. I know my stress-eating triggers well enough to avoid them. I know that finding a way, any way, to get to the gym always helps my stress level. And yet, when faced with the move stress, I still succumbed.

Needless to say, my indiscretions have gone straight to my large post-baby ass and they have hit it hard.

I'm not a skinny woman. I'll never been skinny. But I am generally fit. True, my midsection totally betrays the fact that I pushed a kid out and I'll probably never rock a bikini again, but I can run 6 miles in under an hour and have impressed more than a few soldiers with my ability to do 10 pull-ups. But like most shorter women, add 5 lbs. to my frame and you can instantly see it.

I've gone and added 7.

I'm in my house now. The dishes are unpacked. I have no excuse. It's time to get this belly under control before it decides that it's taking over.

I just wish that giving up the french fries and ice cream and getting back on a regular gym schedule didn't seem so damn depressing.

New blood.

CNN is reporting that House, M.D., one of my television addictions, has hired on several new characters. It's bad enough that I'm battling my Harry-mania right but to learn this now? So many months before the new season begins? What the hell were those media flacks thinking?

Reading this just has me all wondering what will happen to Foreman, Chase and Cameron? Will they go on to start their own department? Will they even still be on the show or come back for episode cameos? If not, is that what we can expect from here on out? To get all connected to these foolish people only to see them driven off by the dreamy crippled Doctor every couple of seasons?

I don't know if my poor heart can take it.

Patience.

I am not a patient woman. If you even suggested that I were capable of patience to anyone who knows me well, they might just keel over with laughter. And so, now that July 21 is nearly upon us, my mantra has been:

I will not download the leaked Harry Potter pages. I will not download the leaked Harry Potter pages. I will not download the leaked Harry Potter pages. I will not download the leaked Harry Potter pages. I will NOT.

But it is so, so tempting.

Crow's feet are sexy.

Jezebel has another one of these great morphs of a real photo and the photoshopped final cover.

I gotta say, I think Faith looks better with the crow's feet. Makes me realize that she laughs a lot. But the back fat? Well, as my friend J. told me last night, that just makes me feel good.

AWOL.

Apologies for the lack of posts. But we didn't have Internet for a whole three days. I really did think I might die.

Hello, my name is Non-Essential Equipment and I am an Internet addict.

But as it were, we are now officially moved. And for a military move, it wasn't horrible. Most of the stuff got here in one piece. But we did not manage to placate the moving gods entirely - we were still bitten by all that piddly moving stuff. For example:

(1) We couldn't find any of the appropriate cables for the TV/DVD/Stereo hook-up. Searched through every single box, made a heck of a mess and then decided to just go out and buy some new ones. Then guess what happened? As we opened the cabinet to hook up those new cables, we found that some enterprising young mover had taped them to the inside of the cabinet. Oh well. Always helps to have some spare cables, I guess.

(2) And spares we have plenty. As I seem to recall we couldn't find the cables the last time we moved either and bought new ones. We found those originals in a box of completely random battle rattle. Guess we never got around to returning them.

(3) My wireless modem somehow reset itself (I believe it might have had something to do with CPT Dick trying to set it up without my help, but he denies it). So after multiple hours on hold with customer service, we now have that back up and running. Of course, that makes it sound so simple. And it wasn't. They kept asking me for numbers and passcodes that were all safely packed away.

Now we just have to figure out (a) how we've managed to acquire so much junk and (b) where we are going to put it all.