Murphy has come to stay

It's inevitable. Murphy's Law grabs hold every time Sarge deploys or goes TDY.

Take for example the other week.

Monday - Facebook and email accounts were hacked, hundreds of 'please send money' messages were sent out to all I've ever known.

Tuesday - Alarm clock failure. Sky missed his school bus - 35 minutes to get him to the school and we live 3 miles away.

Wednesday - Failure to remember previous days alarm failure. Over slept. On the way home we got a flat tire. I had to change it in my pj's. I parked on top of a fire ant mound.

Thursday - 2 1/2 hours at the tire place and $500 to learn that all my tires were junk and needed replacing

Friday - Gracie and I took our lumpy basset hound to the vet to find out that allergies were not  the only cause of his sudden itchiness, apparently so was the flea she pulled off his butt. Everything his rotund little bottom ever touched was immediately scrubbed and washed.

Last Saturday - I broke my finger at 2 am because of a roach. Yes, I'm blaming the roach not my ineptitude.

Side note ... have you ever encountered a "palmetto bug"? If not, let me give you the low down. 2 - 3 inch long flying cockroaches! Sheer terror for this Alaskan grown gal who before moving to the south, thought mosquitoes were a horrible nuisance.

Anyways, it was 2 am, thanks to my ever present insomnia I was wide awake, and went for a glass of water. One roach was laying dead in the middle of the floor thanks to the spray I had laid down to make sure no fleas got to my sheets. I was hapily gloating over it's tiny little dead body (because they freak me out), when another darted out from under the trash can. I grabbed the nearest handy smashing object, and bringing it over my head I slammed it down on the floor killing the filthy little creature. I also broke my finger.

So this week I will be covering myself and all that I love (children, dogs, waffle maker) in bubble wrap and hoping that I don't suffer some freak accident. But hey if I do, maybe they'll let Sarge come home for a bit and he can run ol' Murphy off.

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A move-friendly growth chart

Permanence. It's one thing that's hard to obtain while living this military lifestyle of ours.

When I was a kid, my folks would stand my little brother and I up against a wall in our home, and use a marker to chart how much we had grown. Inch after inch all recorded with a permanent marker. I loved that wall. No matter how often they would paint, those little hash marks and dates were always there to mark our passage of time.

I've wanted a wall like that ever since my Sky was born. We've tried the more mobile versions of a growth chart, but they were usually destroyed or lost during one of our frequent moves. I needed something more permanent.

I don't sleep much, so the other night I grabbed an extra 6 ft 1x6, did some sanding, added a quick pass with an ebony stain and 2 coats of Minwax's Bombay Mahogany poly-stain, and then added the details with a white paint pen and now I have a little permanent reminder of how my kids will grow. I used 3M Command Velcro picture hangers to attach it to the wall, so that when we move and move and move again - all I have to do is pull it down and then reattach it where ever the wind blows us next.

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