I can't sleep

So what do I do? Well I blog of course. Usually I have no problem falling asleep, I'm out like a light every night. But I promised Brandan that I would wake up at 4:45 to make him breakfast because it's his birthday tomorrow so of course I can't fall asleep tonight.

Anyway, I figured I would respond to Maloree's tag. I am to list 7 things about myself, so here goes!

1. I'm a recycling freak. I get really upset if somebody doesn't recycle, and I've been known to dig through the garbage and take recycles out and put them in their proper bins.

2. I'm obsessed with Harry Potter. I know I know that sounds super nerdy and it is, but I grew up with the books and I love them. My mom used to pre oreder them for my brother sister and myself from Barnes and Noble so we would get them delivered to our house the day they were released and I would literally read it in a day. I'm a fast reader haha. I like the movies, but they aren't nearly as good at the books. It is my dream to go to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Orlando, and I've told B that he must take me.

3. I have no idea what I want to do with my life and it terrifies me. I know I have to go back to college eventually, I just hope I have a lot more figured out by that time.

4. I can be really shy, and I always second guess myself, so it's hard for me to make friends. I think that's one of the scariest things about this lifestyle. You never know when you'll be uprooted and moved to somewhere completely new, away from everything you've ever known, and you have to make all new friends.

5. I can't go a day without eating chocolate. It's my weakness. I always have a bag of Dove chocolates in the freezer.

6. I love cooking but I hate cooking for just myself. When I lived with roomates and I only had myself to cook for I rarely made anything, and if I did I made enough to eat for a week. Now that I actually have somebody to cook for I love trying out new recipes and tweaking old ones.

7. It is my life goal to set foot on every continent in the world. I'm at 2 right now, so I have a ways to go haha. I love to travel and I want to see everything, and when I have a family I want to show my children the world so that they can have an appreciation for all cultures and all ways of life.

Well there you have it folks, 7 things you probably didn't care to know about me, but now you know anyway :p

I know I'm supposed to tag people in this, but pretty much every blog I read has been tagged, so I'm just going to cheat and skip that part. Sorry haha.

Now I'm off to try and get some sleep!

Intolerance

I find it sad to read about all the intolerance going on in our world. Specifically in reference to the building of a mosque close to Ground Zero in New York City. Yes, even though 9/11 happend 9 years ago, the wounds seem to still be open and a lot of people think that this mosque is disrespectful. What I find disrespectful is people's intolerance. Yes these terrorists bombed our country in the name of Islam. But really can you consider them good Muslims? I find it hard to believe that their religion teaches hate and violence. Now I'm not going to pretend I'm an expert on Islam, I don't even know anybody whose Muslim. But I think to blame the whole Muslim religion for something that some extremeists did is not right.

There are many people who have done things in the name of Christ that are most definitely not Christian. How about the Westboro Babtist Church. They claim that they are doing God's will, but you ask anybody if they think those nut jobs are true Christians and you will likely get a resounding "HELL NO!" I don't think it's fair to punish religion as a whole for something that a small fraction of their religion believes in.

Ground Zero should be a sight of mourning and a place for all of America to remember what happend that day. The mosque isn't even on the sight, and Muslims have just as much of a right to religion as the rest of America. Our country was founded on the basis that ANYBODY no matter what their religion, race, etc will have the same freedoms and the right to practice their beliefs, and I think its hypocritical to say that one group of people is not allowed to do something just because of some extremists. You'd be hard pressed to find any religion that doesn't have extremists. One of the wonderful things about this country is the diversity. There are so many different cultures here and if we all practiced a little tolerance we would see that take away religion, take away skin color, take away culture, we're all just the same.

Now I'm not one to get into debates over heated topics, but I just felt a compulsion to state my opinion today.

Reality

I've gotten my first dose of Army life. Coming here I knew that this would happen, but I guess you can't really be prepared to hear that your friends are leaving. J and K have been friends with B for a LONG time. In fact J and B have been here at Ft. Lewis for their entire Army career, about 8 years, in the same unit the whole time, which is really rare. They're super close, and B is even god father to J's little girl. When I got here they took me in and accepted me instantly. It was amazing and they are awesome friends. They got orders for Ft. Jackson in a year. It's likely that by that time we'll have orders too. It's just strange because I just moved here and it's exhausting to think about doing it all over again. At least we still have a year to hang out, I'm just not looking forward to moving somewhere that neither of us know anybody. At least here B had friends and I met wives of his friends. When we move we'll both be starting from scratch and that scares me. I'm shy and it's hard for me to open up to people.

B goes back to work Tuesday after a long 3 weeks of block leave. He's going to talk to his reenlistment guy and we'll try to figure out what he's going to do. He's still on the fence about reclassing, and if he does reclass the jobs open to him will be limited because of his rank. And if he gets promoted one more time in the Infantry he'll have to stay Infantry for the rest of his career. So we have some big decisions to make. He won't actually be reenlisting until October so we can hopefully get a bonus. I've told him that I will support him no matter what he decides. It really doesn't matter to me whether he stays Infantry or not, I just want him to be happy with whatever he's doing.

For now I have to go feed the furbabies and contemplate the future.

Rainy Days

I love a rainy day because it's an excuse to stay inside and cuddle all day and watch movies. And also play with my adorable dog and kitten. Evie has been especially rambuctious today, running around the house like a wild kitten. Rainy days also make me feel lazy too. I was going to mop the floors and do some laundry and guess how much of that has gotten done? None. Oh well, there's always tomorrow haha. The only thing I don't like about today is the temperature. I realize that rain usually brings a cold front with it, but it is freezing outside! I actually pulled out my uggs and my jacket to take the dog outside. Sad I know, way to send out August. Hopefully September will give us a little bit warmer weather before fall/winter sets in.

Anyway, I'm going to go enjoy my rainy day with some movies and junk food :)

Homemade Salsa

Ever since I've first eaten at Chipotle I have been in love with their fresh salsa, it has such good flavor and is perfect with their deliciously salty tortilla chips. Unfortunately, since moving to Washington the closest Chipotle is about 40 miles away. I've tried buying some of the fresh salsa from the grocery store, but it never tastes the same. One night I got a brilliant idea, why not add a little lime juice to the fresh salsa for a bit of extra taste. And what do you know, it was perfect! So i decided instead of shelling out for grocery store salsa I would make my own!




Homemade Salsa
4 tomatoes, skinned with seeds and juices removed
1/2 a large onion
some cilantro, I just pulled it from the bunch and chopped it up and threw it in.
1 jalapeno. I'm a baby and I don't like it super spicy, just a little added flavor
a couple squirts of lime juice

Voila! The perfect afternoon snack!

Who Knew?

That one of Evie's favorite places to play would be her litter box and that she would be even more of a begger than the dog. I sure didn't haha. It is very cute though. She hots into her litte box and tosses it around with her paws, creating quite the mess. I'm going to have to get a little mat to go under it so I don't have to sweep every time I turn around.

She's also a huge begger. Anytime you get any food out she comes running up to you and sits at your feet meowing and if you pick her up you can bet that she'll try to stick her nose in your food. Yesterday I was sitting on the couch eating some mac and cheese and she was clawing her way up my body and armys trying to get to my bowl. It was ridiculous. The dog doesn't even beg as much as she does.

We took her to the vet yesterday for a little checkup and she weighs all of one pound. She can jump down from the couch and climb up the couch. She hasn't mastered jumping that high but she does grab onto the couch and claw her way up. I suppose when she gets bigger this could be a problem. I definitely don't want my furniture ruined.

We also found, in talking to the vet, that there's this procedure where they do something to the muscles in the cat's paws so that she can't flex her claws anymore. It's more humane than declawing, so it's definitely something we're going to be looking into. Since we're renters, I'm worried about her ruining something in the house if we don't declaw her.

Sulley has been doing much better with her as well. Yesterday they were snuggling together and it was the cutest thing! I have pics on my phone but its being lame and won't let me upload them to facebook, so I'll have to post some cute pics later.

Introducing Evie!

She's a 6 week old kitten that was rescued along with 3 brothers and sisters by my neighbors. Evidentily their mom abandoned them and they were found malnourished under a house. Our neighbors have been nursing them back to health and bottle feeding them from 3 weeks. She is such a darling though! She's super curious and loves exploring our house.

Sulley is very curious about her, but he doesn't really understand that she's too small to play with. He's a little jealous of her too. Last night any time we were petting her and playing with her he would start whining like pay attention to me! I think once he gets used to her they will end up loving each other!