Just Say Julie

TO: GOD FROM: THE DOG Dear God: Why do humans smell the flowers, but seldom, if ever, smell one another? Dear God: When we get to heaven, can we sit on your couch? Or is it still the same old story? Dear God: Why are there cars named after the jaguar, the cougar, the mustang, the colt, the stingray, and the rabbit, but not ONE named for a dog? How often do you see a cougar riding around? We do love a nice ride! Would it be so hard to rename the Chrysler Eagle the Chrysler Beagle? Dear God: If a dog barks his head off in the forest and no human hears him, is he still a bad dog? Dear God: More meatballs, less spaghetti, please. Dear God: Are there mailmen in Heaven? If there are, do I still have to apologize? Dear God: Let me give you a list of just some of the things I must remember to be a good dog. 1 . I will not eat the cat’s food before they eat it or after they throw it up. 2. I will not roll on dead seagulls, fish, crabs, etc., just because I like the way they smell. 3....

I received an email from Shawn Friday that they had gotten their orders to return home. Finally this ordeal is coming to an end for a second time. I am happy to report that Shawn will be back on or around July 25th. My life can return to normal again. No more will I be the only one to deal with the major malfunctions life throws at me from the gate breaking on our fence to chasing Maverick around the living room with whatever trinket he has decided to pick up this time. How I am looking forward to having another set of hands at my house. Oh don’t get me wrong. There are many other reasons I am happy to have Shawn coming home. I just don’t think I need to go into detail about those. They are obvious. The deployments wear on you after a while. We have a picture in our office that was taken at the Auburn/Arkansas game in 2002. It amazes me to see how much we have aged in the nearly 5 years we have known each other. I would say that 2 deployments in less than 3 years would do ...

So it is a Monday night during the summer and nothing good is on TV. I hate that break in television scheduling when all the regular season shows are on hiatus or reruns and the summer shows haven’t started yet. I was going to watch the Apprentice finale after I let Maverick play in the yard for a bit but it hadn’t started yet. Deal or No Deal was still on. I think I must be the only person in the world who is not a fan of that show. I don’t know what it is but it just doesn’t do it for me. My day was uneventful at most. I woke up and headed to the office to check my email and myspace only to witness the sprinkler company truck arriving. Finally I am getting my sprinkler system so my grass won’t look like crap anymore. After only an hour, their machine broke so they have to come back tomorrow. More delays! Great! So, I went shopping. I drove to Georgetown to get the rest of the napkin rings to match my patriotic summer decor from Kohl’s. So what if I got a few more things...

Well, I have had a lot of people ask so I figured I would give an update on R & R. Shawn got into Killeen around 4 on Monday afternoon. The greatest thing for me was getting the phone call while in the Harker Heights Walmart (because we all know the on in Killeen is scary!) that Shawn was in fact sitting in the Dallas airport waiting for his flight to leave. The first weekend was spent in Arkansas visiting Shawn’s family. The majority of the rest of our time was working on the very long honey-do list that had piled up over nearly 8 months of me living alone in our new house. A quick trip to the village of Salado highlighted the second weekend Shawn was home. The best part of the two weeks was feeling like a family again, just me, Shawn and Maverick. After Shawn boarded his plane on Wednesday to head back, I resumed my depression shopping. However, my unemployment and the vast amount of home improvements and traveling expenses incurred during Shawn’s brief stay have seriousl...

Yes…that’s right. In less than 7 hours, Shawn will be here! I can’t believe it. It has only been seven long months and I don’t think I can hardly stand seven more hours. That’s OK…I still have laundry and a trip to the grocery store to do. I am sure I will be plenty busy all day to. Hope everyone else is going to have as great as a day as I am going to have.

I turned in my notice yesterday. My last day at work will be the 21st. I will be officially unemployed after that until Shawn comes home and I start looking for a new job. This way I can spend some time at home this summer and not have to worry about taking time off to do the things I want to do. Speaking of home, I spent all last week in Mobile and it was very hard to come back to Killeen. Jenny (my sis-in-law) and I made the trip to Mobile Monday morning after receiving the call Sunday afternoon that Nanny was gone. Mom tried to stop us from coming so soon since the funeral wasn’t going to be held until Clay was able to make it home. Turns out the Army doesn’t consider grandparents immediate family and won’t allow emergency leave for a grandparent’s funeral. So, Clay had to take is R & R 4 months early and made it to town Friday afternoon. The funeral was held Saturday afternoon and was a very touching statement to my grandmother’s life. Sunday morning, Jenny, Clay, Ma...

K…first I must say I can’t believe that there is actually a myspace category for shopping so this is perfect for my entry.The time has come to admit that I am a shopaholic. Depression shopping is bad for me. Send my husband away for a year, give us extra money, and what do I do? Let me just put it this way: my house is fully decorated and I have only lived here 8 months. By the way, I am going to shop for Cowboy Boots to wear to Denim and Diamonds tomorrow after work and the VTC. Afterall, I live in Texas now. It is only fitting that I own and wear cowboy (girl?) boots. Now back to my point. I am the perfect shopping companion. If you just want to go shopping to leave the house but don’t really need to spend money, take me. I will do all the spending for you. I can’t help it. It makes me feel better. I like having pretty new things to look at or play with or wear. I am also guilty of finding one thing that I really like and buying several of them. Classic examples are m...