Mood:  caffeinated

Okay enough with the emails. I am sorry I haven’t been posting but I decided to take a little break. But I am back now so here is your long awaited post.

Christmas “vacation” went very well although I felt like I was on the go all the time. We finally got to see Annie and Jimmy’s adorable new house and Potter and Bilbo got to meet and play a bit. It tool Potter awhile to recover. He was so utterly exhausted that he slept for two days.

I got most everything on my Christmas list and I think Lennie enjoyed the day as well. He loved is Ipod and has already downloaded 2 CD’s onto it. He has borrowed some of mine to load and he got almost $200 in Itunes gift cards so he should be set for awhile. Some of you have asked me what I got from Lennie. They were a bit unusual but they make sense if you know us really well. I got a toilet repair kit so that I can fix my running toilet and a gym membership. Don’t worry ladies I asked for that one. See Lennie wants to get pregnant sometime after he gets back from Iraq so I decided that I would use the time to get myself in shape. I seriously need to lose like 20lbs and I need to strengthen my back muscles so I don’t suffer major back strain from trying to carry a baby around. My Dr. actually recommended this because of my age and says it will make the pregnancy a little easier as well as help me lose the post baby weight.

Okay back to the trip...We had to head the day after Christmas because I had to be back at work. We started out a little late because Lennie wanted to install Mom’s new thermostat. We got to Fredericksburg and it started to pour down rain which made for a lousy ride. The Doctor had put me on Prednisone before I left to help fight the allergic reaction I had. The reaction has subsided but the medicine has caused me to retain water and feel very bloated and caused some heartburn. So being in a truck for 6+ hours was VERY uncomfortable. All I wanted to do was get home and relax. No such luck. We stepped inside the house and it was freezing. I went to see if the house sitter had turned the heat back. Nope…everything was set to what it was when I left. Lennie climbed up in the attic and discovered that the flame on the furnace wouldn’t light. He was able to manually light it but said we would only have heat until the system reached 74 degrees and then would shut off again. Apparently the igniter had gone bad which he managed to fix the next day. I guess it is good that I married an HVAC guy. LOL

New Year’s Eve was a lot of fun. We met up with two other couples at Michael Dean’s for dinner. The food was okay but not the best I have ever had. We had a great waitress who tried to keep us at the table as long as she could so she didn’t get sat again. We finally headed over to the bar about 11:30, got are party hats on and our free glass of Champaign and rung in the New Year at midnight. Feeling exhausted we quickly called a cab and went home. New Year’s Day was filled with home projects like installing my new toilet system and two dimmer switches which I installed myself.

This past weekend was Lennie’s last weekend in Raleigh for 6 months. I had been okay with the deployment up until now. We took Potter to the new dog park in Wake Forest and watching Lennie play with Potter knowing that this would be the last time he saw him till July made me tear up and then when Lennie left last night o drive back up to VA I cried for about an hour. I am usually not this emotional. I am hoping it is just PMS. I am going up to VA next weekend to spend a couple of days with Lennie before he deploys on Sunday. I am going to try my best not to cry but I can’t promise anything.

I have been trying to reassure Lennie that I will be okay and not worry about me while he is gone.  I would rather he focus on himself and be alert to what is going on around him so that he can come home safe and sound. I have great friends here who have all told him that they will check up on me to make sure that I am doing okay and Annie has even offered me a few shifts at the pub to try to take my mind off of him being gone. It isn’t the days I worry about because I will be busy with work. The nights will be tough because I will have plenty of time alone to think about him being gone. But I know that if we make it through this we can make it through just about anything.

Well I should get back to work. I have a lot of pictures to post but it will take me awhile to get them all up so please be patient. Hope everyone had a great weekend.