Almost there!

We are almost to Minnesota. Actually, we're almost to North Dakota, from which we'll cross into MN before long. This has been an insane trip.

First off, we left slightly later than we were planning on because it just took a lot longer to get everything done that we had to do before leaving. Then we got across the New Mexico state line, and Thak said nonchalantly that he hoped the cat hadn't gotten shut in Orren's room by accident. I was under the impression that he wouldhve checked on to find her in there before shutting the door, but no, it didn't occur to him until we were in New Mexico. So we thought about what to do for a minute, and couldn't figure out a way around going back and finding out 100% where the cat was. If she was stuck in one of the bedrooms, she'd have starved to death before we got back, so it was literally a matter of life or death. We turned around and went home. She WAS stuck in a bedroom. It was Erin's, not Orren's, but she was stuck in a bedroom no less. I'm glad we went back. Of course, that put us roughly 3 hours later than we had planned on originally. Not cool.

We drove through New Mexico, which is a GIANT pile of crap. I mean, I thought parts of that state were pretty, because people said that, but they were wrong (and from there for the most part... you can't ever take anyone's word on the place they're from as far as how good or bad it is). What's more, it's a pretty big state, and it took forever to get through, because we more or less had to go on somewhat of a diagonal path up it. Then we crossed back into north Texas, and that was beautiful. It was nothing but beef ranches, and it felt like we were in the US again. New Mexico has this creepy feel to it like the whole state is haunted by Mexican banditos and aliens (extraterrestrials... you know, Area 51, Roswell, etc). It was nice to get away from that in north Texas.

Then we crossed the Oklahoma panhandle, all 34 miles of it. It was ugly, but not horridly so. Kansas took a long time also because we had to go basically diagonal across it also. Kansas, I can safely say, is a butt ugly state. It really is. I am trying to find something good to say about Kansas, but I'm not coming up with anything. It's just a nasty place.

It was night when we crossed into Nebraska, and the first thing I noticed about it was how much snow was there. Nebraska has a ton of snow, more than I've ever seen before, and remember, I lived in Missouri for a winter once! Nebraska was very cold and gross, weather-wise, and their road signs were completely archaic. It looked like they hadn't been replaced since sometime during the Nixon administration. Nasty weather and old road signs aside, I envy every person stationed at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha. Omaha is what I pictured for a big city before we moved to El Paso. It's pretty, and the roads are good. The houses are adorable, and while I'm sure they have poor neighborhoods there, it can't be many, because the city in general looked very middle-class. It was an adorable city. I now know why people stationed there get upset when orders come down for them to move elsewhere.

Shortly after Omaha, we crossed into Iowa, which is actually really pretty. We weren't there for terribly long before we crossed into South Dakota, which seemed 10 times as snowy as the other places. We stopped for the night there. By then, we'd been going for over 36 hours, and just really needed sleep.

We have been in South Dakota all day, and are close to the North Dakota line. South Dakota is gorgeous. It's exactly what people picture when they think of the heartland. There are farms everywhere, with red barns and concrete silos, crop fields as far as you can see, old farm houses with big front porches, and pines covered in snow. For all the wasted time in ugly states like Kansas and New Mexico, I am glad I have seen South Dakota. It is extremely beautiful, despite being inhumanely cold and windy.

We are roughly 100 miles south of Fargo, driving north on I-29. Slightly before we reach Fargo, we will cross into Minnesota, and from there, it will not be long.

I've taken a few pictures along the way, and will post them when I get home. I forgot the USB cable for my camera, so I can't download them yet. I will when I get home, though. There's even one of me with a Pamida! Pamida is me and Thak's oldest inside joke, and only people who are from the midwest (plus me) will ever understand it!!

It's something new for me to get used to.

I don't know why, but I always get the slightest chuckle out of friends who bring their cars here to be worked on because their husbands either can't or won't do it.

This is something that will become a huge factor in our lives within the next couple years, of course, and in fact, it's families without a competent mechanic in the bunch who will put food on our table and a roof over our heads. I certainly mean no disrespect to our future customer base.

It's just not something I'm used to AT ALL. Sure, I can't fix anything about either of our cars (See, that's one reason I married a mechanic! I can't stand the thought of paying shop fees and labor charges for the simplest of things! Haha!) so I certainly understand and do not think less of anyone who's in the same boat, but I don't know what I'd do if my husband didn't know his way around an engine.

One of my girl Army buddies used to always say, when someone's husband would be about to come home from a deployment, "It will sure be good to have him around for the things a man is good for, won't it?" For one, I sure agree with her, but for another, I'm glad that mine's good at fixing stuff! For all the messy garage, the dirty jeans, the gloves which have to be washed a certain way, the expenditures I don't understand, I wouldn't trade one thing. I'm so glad my husband is a mechanic!

Holiday stuff again.

So in case anyone forgot, or didn't know, here's what we're doing. Thak signs out on leave at midnight on the 19th (that is, midnight on the day that was actually the 18th, so Friday). We will all be going up to Battalion with him to sign out, and will leave IMMEDIATELY for MN. We're leaving at midnight so that the kids will sleep for much of the trip.

At this time, we're undecided as to whether we will drive straight through, or stop over somewhere along the way. We're going to play that by ear, see how we feel, and how it's going with the kids. It's a huge pain to get the kids to sleep in a hotel room, so that kind of makes us want to just drive straight through, but at the same time, we'll be beyond dead when we get there if we don't stop somewhere along the way. We'll just see, I guess.

But that's the plan. We're leaving late on Friday night, and will arrive either late Saturday night, or sometime on Sunday.

"I've done it all my life, and I'm just fine!"

I wonder when Americans, particularly American women, will wake up and realize that we have the wrong idea. Conversations within my group of friends run the gamut, and two topics that have come up recently is the influx of foreign brides from eastern Europe and Latin America (in the military community, the Asian ones don't even register with us anymore because there are so many, and always have been), and the ever-popular topic of contraception. Believe it or not, these two things are inextricably related. Hang with me, and I'll tell you how.

I don't object to American men marrying foreign women, not in the least. I mostly wanted to know why there seemed to be such a rise in the popularity of such unions, so I did a little research. I turned up some things that were unpalatable upon initial reading, but ultimately made quite a bit of sense. It seems that many young American men are dissatisfied with American women within their age groups for many reasons, and one of the big ones is that many such guys feel that the American women available to them are all fat. That seems totally ridiculous until you actually look a little deeper into it, and find out that while it's certainly a generalization, and therefore cannot apply universally, there is definitely some truth in it also. The average height and weight for an adult American woman is 5'4" and 160 pounds. The resultant BMI of this combination is 27.5, which falls squarely within Overweight range. If that's the average, then it's certainly no surprise that obesity affects so many Americans these days. In 2007, 27% of American women were categorized as Obese. That means their BMI is 30 or higher. Wow.

Now, of course, these problems are not seen abroad as much, and especially not in eastern Europe, Asia, and parts of South America. Hell, if I were a single man my age, I wouldn't have anything to do with American women of this age category either!! I'm married and female, and I'm still disgusted. I cannot imagine how single men feel about the situation here stateside!

How can any of this relate to contraception? I'll tell you how. I was talking the other day with an acquaintance who wants to get a hormonal IUD placed, because she's been on the pill for over 20 years, and her doctor wants her to get off it. I said that synthetic hormones are not the best thing to use, and that she might look into non-hormonal options such as a copper IUD (which I have used for years, and highly recommend!) Everyone else looked at me like I had lost my mind. "But aren't there synthetic hormones in the pill? I've been taking that for x number of years, and I'm fine!"

You're fine? Let's see what "fine" looks like. Fine weighs well over 200 pounds and stands not a millimeter over 5'7". Fine has Type 2 Diabetes. Fine had to undergo extensive fertility treatments just to get pregnant. I think we're safe to say that is not fine. Nobody in that room was fine. They were all overweight or obese, with health problems out the wazoo, and most of them had some reproductive malady as well. They have all been on hormonal contraception of some variety since they were in their teens. I cannot even begin to believe that is a coincidence.

Internationally, hormonal contraception is unpopular. In fact, the very copper IUD which I wear is the #1 most popular form of contraception in the world. The reasons for that are the same reasons I use it. It's completely idiot-proof. It lasts 10 years, so you get a lot for your money. It does not contain any hormones, so it does not interfere with your cycle at all, or have any of the side-effects that hormonal methods have. The world got the memo that synthetic hormones are not our friends, yet here at home, our food supply is riddled with synthetic hormones, and as if that weren't bad enough, we further saturate our girls with them in the form of oral or injected contraceptive from the time they're teenagers. In no other country is it as popular as it is here, and the ones that come close are also the ones who are on our heels when it comes to obesity. This cannot be coincidental.

I wonder when the average American woman will wake up and see what she's doing to herself. I'm really surprised by the lack of self-awareness that I see in my peers. Maybe it is a universal human trait. Maybe I'm just as delusional as they are, although I try very hard to be self-aware. Still, the fact remains that it is obvious that a large percentage of American women are messing themselves up every day, and think they're fine. For the single ones, this means even more so than ever (within our lifetimes anyhow) that they are competing with women from abroad, who don't have these same afflictions. It's quite the situation, but very fixable.... if only the ones involved would be self-aware enough to fix it rather than sit there and insist they're fine, and (the single ones) wonder why they can't find Mr. Right.

What would you trust random Craigslist sellers with?

I'm a Craigslist fanatic. I don't know why I am anymore, though. Ever since we left the Savannah Craigslist area, it's been nothing but crap. On Savannah Craigslist, you find pretty much anything you want, and very decent prices. The best thing to ever happen to a middle-middle-class mom such as myself is to stumble upon a recent listing from a rich lady who just HAS to empty out that pesky old nursery TODAY!! Savannah had its share of rich people, so this was not an uncommon occurrence. Being the wife of a hardworking Staff Sergeant sure didn't hurt my case for getting some of these fine ladies to hold certain items for me until Thak could come with me to pick it up. Anyhow, sales like that explain how we scored the $600 rocking chair we wanted for $40. It's also how I scored a front pack that retails for $120 and had been used twice for $35. Sure, Savannah Craigslist was not without its crap. There was the lady who advertised "BEAUTIFUL maternity clothes, size XS!!" and then when we got there to look at them (and "there" was a bad part of downtown), they were NOT beautiful, and she failed to mention that everything was Petite length. (Yeah, that's a conundrum for another day, finding extra-small maternity pants in long lengths.)

Here, though, it's another story. I have not bought one thing off this city's Craigslist in the 9 months we've been here, and that's saying something. It's all crap, though. The baby and kid stuff is all Wal Mart brands which I wouldn't even use new, far less used (When it comes to baby gear, you really do get what you pay for.) and the kids clothing lots people list are always ugly or in bad condition, not to mention way overpriced. Yet for some unknown and probably completely inane reason, I peruse Craigslist at least every other day.

One thing I've noticed is that a lot of people sell used car seats. Now, it's not illegal to resell car seats. It's not even inadvisable if the person you're getting it from is a friend or family member who has similar car seat safety practices as you have. However, it is HIGHLY inadvisable to buy a used car seat from a stranger, and anyone who does is not thinking quite clearly. There are a few reasons why.

First, unless it's a Britax AND you know what to look for, you have no way of knowing if the seat has been in an accident before. A seat that's been in an accident cannot be used again.

Secondly, I've seen some seats sold that are probably close to as old as I am, and the people say something like, "a bit discolored, but still just fine." No, it's not just fine. Car seats expire. Have people not heard the term "plastic fatigue"? My chemistry background is limited to lower division courses in general chem, and one upper division course in qualitative analysis, plus anything I picked up as a physics major. My point is, I'm NOT a Chemist by any stretch of the imagination, and even I knew about plastic fatigue. Isn't it common sense that polymers break down over time? For this reason, buying an expired car seat is extra stupid. Selling one ought to be a misdemeanor.

Finally, in order for car seats to be effective, their straps can never be submerged in any liquid. They're treated with certain strengthening agents which could wash out, weakening the straps if they are ever submerged in any liquid including water. This is probably the most sinister of all because so few people seem to know about it (even people who know about expiration dates and accidents) and it's impossible to tell just by visual inspection whether a seat's straps have been soaked. I see it on about 75% of the ads selling car seats, "My wife washed it in Dreft, and it's ready to go." I always want to write them and say, "I hope you guys kept the straps out of the wash." but never do because frankly, people get ugly about car seats if you try to correct them on anything they're doing. It's ridiculous.


Basically, the thing a parent has to ask him/herself when buying a car seat is, "Do I trust this random Craigslist seller with my child's life?" If the answer to that question is no, then don't buy a used car seat. The average used car seat that's for sale costs about $20. I propose you the following:

Cosco Scenera, which will work fine from birth to preschool, and goes for under $60.

If you're the type who's absolutely got to have a carrier-style infant seat then here's an Evenflo Discovery for $60. If money's that tight, though, I recommend going with the convertible and getting more bang for your buck. (Yes, she of the collection of $300 car seats does still love a bargain, hard as that may be to believe.)

Yes, the above two seats are roughly $40 more expensive than the average used one on Craigslist, but isn't your kid's life worth $40?

Don't buy a used car seat.

A good example of sense of entitlement

On the video that follows, they are discussing the issue of whether or not obese people should have to buy two seats on airplanes.



I am of the school of thought which holds that obese people should buy as many seats on any given airplane as they take up. I just don't see how there could be any other school of thought on it. It's quite cut and dry as far as I'm concerned. Pay for as many seats as you take up, plain and simple.

I was actually quite surprised to hear such backlash against that type of sentiment on various online forums. I have noticed quite a change in netizens within the past couple years. I used to get away with certain brands of humor quite easily. For example, it was very socially acceptable to refer to my old First Sergeant as a fat bastard, since he is fat and he is a bastard. These days, if I say anything to that effect, I get chewed out by ten obese forum-goers (almost always American women, occasionally a British woman, and very rarely an American man) for using the word fat as negative, and the like. Of course this has only served to make me think even less of fat people than I already did, but that's a story for another day. Today, we're talking about fat bastards and airplane seats. My main point is that I was completely shocked at how many people thought the airlines should just give the fat people two seats for the price of one. I mean, are you kidding me? Since when is it the fault of any given airline that someone is too fat to fit in a seat?

I equate this expectation of free seats for the obese to Thak and I walking into any given airline terminal and expecting to be sold four seats for the price of three for our little family. See, we have an active 11-month-old toddler boy who WILL NOT ride on a lap. He's just not a cuddly baby like that. Erin would have been at that age, as would many other babies. With this in mind, couldn't we expect a free fourth seat since it's certainly not OUR fault that our 11-month-old won't be content as a lap child, and could we not argue that his active and independent personality should not result in us being charged for a seat for him, whereas a family with a cuddly baby who would be content on a parent's lap could get away without paying for such a thing?

The kid situation is ridiculous, isn't it? Of course it is. Who would ever walk into any given airline terminal and demand a free seat for their kid? Nobody. Yet it's basically the same request that these fat people are making, except there's no kid. It's the left or right half of their butt that needs the extra seat. Yet in the eyes of fat acceptance activists (don't even get me going on these annoying excuses for human flesh) this totally makes a difference.

I say it's horrible from a business standpoint, and bad from a social standpoint. As much as the fat acceptance crew may try to deny it, obesity is a huge problem in our country, and anything we do to enable these people to continue to be fat is doing our nation a huge disservice. With all this talk of universal health care (again, don't get me going on THAT), I think it's far more important than ever to make it as difficult as possible for the obese to continue to be obese, and stop them from developing a sense of entitlement to free perks on the basis of their enormity.

ASE Certified!!!

As you all know already, Thak took the first of his ASE certification exams about a month ago. It was the Electronics one, which is pretty universally regarded as the most difficult of them all. Surely, his 12 years as a generator mechanic did not hurt his chances a bit, but he was still nervous about the test. It was hard to wait a month for the results. I wasn't nervous, though. I knew he'd do it.

We will be receiving the results via mail next week, so we were surprised to receive notification from ASE today that we could check his results online. Sure enough, when Thak got home for lunch, he logged into his ASE account, and saw that while no exact test score was posted, he definitely passed, because he is listed as ASE Certified in Electronics.

So what does this mean for us? Well, basically, as of today, Thak just became about 10x more marketable. You are only required to have one certification done in order to be considered ASE Certified, and to wear the patch on the left of the page. Thak is in school to become a Master Technician (the patch at the bottom right is what they wear). We've still got our eyes on that, and there's a ways to go before he earns it, but today's news that he passed the first of his certification exams, and the hardest one at that, was just what we needed to keep going with all this entails.

It has not been easy, and we're nowhere near done yet. Everyone in this family has paid for this. The kids miss their daddy, and I'm raising them practically by myself. Then there's Thak, who's running from 5 am each morning until after 10 pm each night. Finally, it's starting to pay off, though. It's for something. If Thak got out of the Army tomorrow (yeah, I wish!) he could land better jobs thanks to just even having one certification area completed, than he could have before with none. As far as I'm concerned, that's worth something. We're on our way!!!

Car seat shopping AGAIN! They BOTH hit a growth spurt!

Both kids have hit a major growth spurt lately. Orren is pretty decidedly a size 3T, with the exception of a few 2T's which are from brands that run big. Of course, typical Orren, he's tall and slim as far as babies go. We had to move up the harness straps in his primary car seat (that would be the Britax Diplomat he uses in the car), and I made a dubious discovery. He's nearly outgrowing it in height. Yes, we'll soon be putting away the Diplomat for the next baby. I'm seeing a trend in this house. The average cost of our car seats is $273. Thus far, it takes Orren an average of 6 months to outgrow any given one of them.

This means we are in the market for a Radian XT SL (in Nitro) for Orren. We knew we wanted one anyhow, but thought we'd have longer to think on it than we do. As it is, probably within the next month or two, we'll go ahead and take the plunge on that. It's yet another $300 something car seat, but like the other ones, it's well worth it for its safety features. Plus, it installs via the LATCH system until 80 pounds, whereas other seats only install via LATCH for half that much. LATCH is a safer install than seat belt, so we definitely want the SL (Super LATCH) technology on our next seat, and Radian is the one that's making that. They also rear-face to 45 pounds, and when your baby is as big as Orren, and you hope to rear-face for at least 3 years, that high rear-facing weight limit is very important. If we went with just the standard 35 pound rear-facing limit that other seats have, we would barely make it 18 months at this rate.

Erin, too, has hit a growth spurt, and has nearly outgrown the 5-point harness of her Nautilus (BTW, friends don't let friends buy Graco. The Nautilus isn't bad, but since we're used to high-end car seats, it just feels cheap. Just dish out the extra cash and go for the Britax Regent if you're considering a Nautilus. In retrospect, that's what we should have done.) and the Nautilus has the second highest harness slots on the market (the only thing higher is the Regent, by an inch) so it won't be long before she will be unable to ride in a 5-point harness anymore. Therefore, I've been shopping for boosters for her.

Now, because I know everyone's thinking it, I have to say it. No, all boosters are most certainly NOT created equal. That $20 piece of crap you can buy at Wal Mart does not offer True Side Impact Protection, and will probably fall apart before you've gotten more than a couple years of use out of it. Not to mention, it'll probably be uncomfortable as all hell. It's kind of like putting your baby in a $40 car seat. Sure, the law says you can, but that doesn't mean you should. (Obviously, if that's all you can afford, then it's understandable.)

Anyhow, for boosters for Erin, we have one already. Her Nautilus will work as a high-back booster, and since it does top-tether and all that, we're happy with it for use as a booster. (In fact, I'll be happy on some level to get rid of those cheap straps! They're the part that disgusts me the most about the Nautilus.) We need one more, though, because she still only has the Nautilus, which we transfer back and forth between the car and the truck. The Nautilus was actually bought mostly for the truck since it's huge. We were going to get Erin a Radian car seat for the car, but now that she's too tall for that, we can't.

There are two boosters we are considering. The Sunshine Kids Monterey is made by the same company that makes Radian car seats, and the quality is absolutely outstanding. It is also compact car friendly, which is exactly what I need. I am going to have to fit three car seats across the back of my HHR within the next couple years, and it'll work if at least two of them are Radians. The other seat we're SORT OF considering for Erin is the Britax Parkway , but at present, I'm leaning away from that because it's wide. Plus, it's uglier than sin. They're roughly the same price, as you can see, and honestly, as far as car seats go, a $120 booster is a lot cheaper than what we've been paying for stuff. Plus, it's the last car seat we'll ever have to buy Erin, and both of these models have the quality to stand up to many years of use. They both feature excellent side-impact protection, and their belt positioning apparatuses are superior to those of cheaper boosters. All in all, either one is worth our money, but we'll more than likely go with the Monterey. Plus, Erin likes the pink. I kind of would like to talk her into the red and black so it will match the car and Orren's car seat. I don't think I can sell that one, though. Trying to get a little girl to accept red when pink is available is far easier said than done!!

So yes, we are car seat shopping again. Thankfully it's slightly cheaper this time around since Erin is going into a belt positioning booster again. :( I'm a little sad about that. Just knowing how much safer it is to be in a 5-point harness, I was not looking forward to being unable to keep her in one. We'll just hope that there are a few more months before she truly outgrows her 5-point harness. She's got one more inch to grow, and then we'll have to take her out of it. With Erin, that could happen next week or three months from now. Your guess is as good as mine.