Disclaimer

These are the everyday ramblings of a navy wife during deployment. At times this blog may be controversial, disagreeable, or just plain whiney...but hopefully it will be mostly fun. Welcome :)

Monday, June 27, 2011

Blog Giveaway

My friend Chantal (a fellow military wife) is having a neat giveaway on her blog, ending on June 30th...so check it out!

Ablogadaywhileyoureaway.blogspot.com

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Harley

Last week was hell for me.

I really feel like that line in itself should sufficiently show how I feel, but I guess it wouldn't hurt to elaborate.

Last week I was at a really low point in my life, and extremely stressed out. I cried everyday for a week and a half, and feel like I might cry right now thinking about this. A series of events ultimately lead to my having to find a new home for my puppy Harley. Harley is the sweetest, smartest dog that I have ever met or had and it hurts alot still thinking that realistically I will never see her again.

Last week I was severely stressed out about a few things, the largest of which was trying to find a suitable home for Harley on very short notice to save her from the pound.

Originally my friends Dana and Jake, a recently married couple living in Washington State told me that they would take her, if I could get her out there to them. It was a very generous offer, and after much consideration and discussion with my aunt, who has alot of professional and personal experience with dogs, I decided that transporting her cross-country was not an option that I was comfortable with for the sake of her health and well being.

My mother saw my distress and posted on facebook about our situation, and her wonderful friend Stephanie helped to put me in contact with a few people who seemed genuinely interested, but ultimately all of whom did not pan out for one reason or the next.

Finally, as I was preparing to take her to NC and check her into a well renowned humane society that checks homes of potential pet parents and is no-kill, fate stepped in.

We went to petsmart to get her nails cleaned up and I asked the technician is she knew anybody that was interested in a puppy, and she did. The manager of the pet salon and I started to communicate, we set up a play date, and I decided that these were indeed the perfect owners for her.

The couples' names are Jake and Sarah, who live not too far from my mom. They have a 15 month old dog named Sooki who is also a female lab-pit mix, and they are very passionate about animals, and had been looking for a second dog. They take their dog camping, hiking, running, and their other dog is meticulously maintained.

They loved Harley, and she seemed to love them and fit into their home effortlessly, and I think that as heartbroken as I am for the time being, this ultimately was what is best for her. I don't think that even I could have given her the type of life that she deserves.

I guess what hurts me the most is that there's really no way to explain it to Harley. I know that she's happy, and Sarah and I have agreed to stay in contact, but I guess I might feel better if I could have sat her down and had a talk with her like I could have with a kid, instead of dropping her off and walking out of her life without ever saying goodbye.

I think I'm writing this all down because for the past week I've been trying so damn hard to not think about it, and hold it in, and that's not doing me very much good. Right now I'm tearing up a little bit (alot actually) and am going to write out exactly how I feel for myself to get it out, so that I can finally start to heal.

Dear Harley,

I love you. More than anything in the world I wish that I could just grab you up in my arms like when you were a baby and hug you and tell you that and have you understand. I know that scientifically speaking, you'll forget about me. I know that dogs don't have emotions like humans do, and that I'm making this harder than it needs to be for myself. I know that I'm being selfish.

When Mike left for deployment, you were the only one that I had. There were so many mornings when I didn't even want to get out of bed because I didn't see any point to it. I felt so damn bad about life and myself, and if it wasn't for loving you and caring for you, I don't know how I would have dealt with any of it. You were the only reason that I even got dressed some days. When I decided that going to NJ was the best thing for deployment, I never thought that I would have to give you up. I'm so sorry.

The only reason that I could let you go was because I knew that you would have a much better life with Sarah and Jake than I could ever provide for you. I took care of you the best that I could, and you taught me so much about responsibility and love. I'm going to think about you alot in the coming years, and miss you often. The only comfort I have is that I could give you a wonderful life that you deserve and even though it's not with me, I hope that you have the best life in the world. That's all I could want for you to thank you for pulling me out of the darkness when I felt like I had nobody else. I hope that's enough.

And no matter what, please never, ever forget how much I love you and always will.

Saturday, June 18, 2011

Royal Icing- An addition

Hey guys, sorry about the delay on posting some pictures of my royal icing experimental flowers. My phone where the pictures were stored had an unfortunate encounter with a glass of ice water..haha. Below are the best of each flower that we made, minus the rose bud...which isn't impressive because I can't do it!


First and foremost, this is my rose....took a few tries, but I enjoy the final product
This is the 'primrose' I'm not entirely sure what they look like in real life lol

This is the apple blossom, I like the ruffled edges even though they were unintentional!



That's it for this post, as I'm going to be a bit busy today and tomorrow sorting out some things for an upcoming vacation and other things going on in my life. I'll post a longer blog of what I've been doing tomorrow. Have a great day all :)










Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Confessions of Royal Icing

When Mike deployed, I made the decision to set some goals for myself to pass the time. One such goal included to improve my cake decorating skills.

Last night I had one of my cake decorating classes. It was class 2 of the course, "Flowers & Cake Design" and we dealt with royal icing. For those that don't know anything about it, it's a sugar based icing that crusts and eventually completely hardens over time. Because it crusts so quickly, it's ideal for making flowers with specific details, and lifting them onto cakes immediately or at a later date. Sounds easy enough, right? Right?

Hardly! The flower designs that she taught us were indeed, simple enough but everyone did a good deal of struggling with some of them. I was sorely disappointed to learn that making a rose is alot harder than I had anticipated, and as much as it pains me to say this....I suck at it! Luckily, by the end of class I had nailed the other flowers, and even made one passable rose.

I'll add some photos later when my phone stops acting up! Have a good day everyone!

Monday, June 13, 2011

First Post

(Warning- the following is a bit non-sensical, and probably not grammatically correct, either..in other words, hang in there for some rambling at it's finest)

So after a few days of fussing with the design of this blog, I figured that I should actually ya know, post something. I originally intended this just to be a blog about my everyday life, sort of as a journal to myself..a creative playground if you will.

But then I thought that it would be a great idea to have an extra line of communication to my husband who's currently serving in Japan (As I'm sure anybody reading this would know).

So there we go, communication & fun...

So...

How on earth do I get started?

I figure that like for anything in my life, having structure is a better bet than having none. I have a few fun ideas about what to do here, like maybe some small giveaways, cool things I find online or elsewhere in the community, book reviews, features on other blogs/news articles, and general updates on a few small deployment-related goals that I have in mind.

I'll guess I'll start at the beginning with some introductions for those followers who don't know me IRL.

My name is Brittany. I'm 23 years old, and a navy wife. More specifically, I'm a HoneyBee. A HoneyBee is a cute nickname for the wife of a Seabee.

Now you might be asking, what in the hell is a Seabee? Good question. Seabee or "CB" stands for Construction Battalion. My husband of a little over 6 months, Mike, is a Seabee. These in their simplest definition are the boots-on-the-ground, hard working construction battalion that the Navy can proudly boast. They were a divison of the Navy founded in 1942 to assist in contruction efforts during WWII. They do alot of humanitarian work around the world, and while their numbers quietly diminish over the years since WWII, their hard work and dedication surely does not. (Mikey- tell me if I need to add more to this!)

To learn more about Seabees and their pride check out: www.seabeee.navy.mil

We're currently stationed in the Atlantic Seabee port in Gulfport, MS. Mike is deployed though, and I'm spending some time with family while waiting out deployment (is it over yet?!?!).

Besides that, I guess there's not a whole ton to put on here today, but boy does it feel good to get started! Keep tuned, next time I promise to post something of interest!
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