Just Say Julie

Since I finally received the final divorce decree last week, I decided today was the day to make the name change official. So over the course of two hours this morning, I undid the last four years of my life. My trip to the Social Security office was interesting. I headed there first thing this morning thinking I would beat the crowd a bit. But even at 9:20 I still ended up with number A50 when they were on A15. After sitting there for a few minutes, a man approached me who had completed his time at the window and handed me his number (apparently he had two) which was A26. Yipee! That cut my wait time in half. So I passed on my A50 to the man sitting next to me who had A68. I figured it was the least I could do. Then I had some random old drunk man (who had the decency to be sucking on a breath mint) sat down next to me because “I was the prettiest lady in the place.” I can’t decide if the married customer service rep who waited on me was trying to flirt or not when he told me I didn...

OK…so I have decided that my neighbors must hate me. I am sure it is due to the fact that Maverick insists on barking (not just whining…full fledged baying) every morning while I am in the shower or any other time he is left alone in the kitchen while I am in the apartment. Their revenge for the noise created by my adorable pooch is to take showers at odd hours of the night and morning. Now one might wonder why taking a shower is such a bad thing. The fact is I have never in my life heard such terrible noise until I heard the sounds coming from upstairs when the shower is turned on. It truly sounds like Niagara Falls is coming through my ceiling. During waking hours, I can ignore the noise by turning up the volume on my TV or whatever other form of entertainment I might be partaking in. But the late night and early morning showers are enough to wake me from a dead sleep (and that takes a lot if you know anything about how I sleep). During the Thanksgiving holidays while my par...

I woke up this morning feeling like someone was trying to rip apart my stomach which was not good since I knew there was no way I could take a day off work. Not quite sure what caused it but I can tell you that the casserole I ate leftovers from last night is going in the trash when I get home. So, I dragged myself around the apartment this morning getting ready and headed out into the cold for the 10 minute drive to my office. I remember that I hadn’t picked up the mail from the evening before because my car was loaded down with groceries from my first real trip to the grocery store since moving to Austin. So, I headed over to the mail center and opened my box and there it was…like a light shining down from the heavens…an envelope that read “Shelia F. Norman, District Clerk, Bell County, Texas.” Finally, after nearly a month of waiting, my divorce decree had arrived. I could now officially return to my maiden name. Suddenly I felt better and there is a little added spring in m...

Those of you who know me well know that Christmas is my favorite time of the year. So, you will be shocked to know that the Christmas spirit has not even registered on my radar this year. I don’t know if it is the divorce or the move or what but I just can’t seem to get excited about Christmas. As a matter of fact, I keep getting annoyed when I see Christmas decorations. I haven’t put up a Christmas tree in two years due to deployments and not being home for Christmas. This will make year number three without a tree which makes me sad. There are two reasons for this: the lack of space in my apartment and the fear of Maverick destroying the tree. The fact of the matter is that I haven’t even touched the boxes with my Christmas decorations in them. I promise I am trying to get myself into the appropriate mood. I hung a mistletoe air freshener in my car and loaded the cd changer down with all my Christmas cds. I even wore my first Christmas sweater of the season today. ...

This will probably be the last post I will be able to label “Military” now that my life as a military spouse has come to an end. I received an email from Shawn’s old commander’s wife about a volunteer award they had put me up for in recognition of my time as FRG advisor. I didn’t think much of it because I knew that there were many awards out there for volunteer service and I felt fairly certain they were easy to get. So several emails later we were finally able to nail down a date when I could escape from work in Austin to head up to Killeen to have the award presented. My one criteria for this date was that it had to be before November 30 since that was when my ID expired and I refused to go get a visitor’s pass for an installation I basically lived on for the last two years of my life. So Wednesday was the day we chose since I also had to be in Killeen for a meeting about the church retreat. Little did I know when arrived at the ceremony just what a big deal this award was. I...

Thanks to the cold temperature and rain, today has turned out to be a very lazy day for Maverick and me. Puppy dog has pretty much not left my side on the couch since this morning, with the exception of jumping up to bark at the Pizza Delivery person. Mom & Dad left this morning to drive back to Alabama and hopefully avoid some of the post-Thanksgiving traffic. I should be unpacking the boxes that seem to be multiplying like rabbits around here but somehow I have gotten sucked into the reruns of the first season of October Road on the Soap Network (who knew there was a Soap Network?). Despite not leaving the house, I still managed to be hit on today. After muting October Road and curling up for a nap with Puppy, there was a knock on my door. All I could think to myself was that no one knows where I live so who would be here? Of course it was someone trying to sell me something. Some guy in some program selling books to help earn money for college (UT of course). During our...

Well the day finally came for my apartment in Austin to be available. I can officially call myself an Austinite now that I have a job and a residence in this fine city. I woke up last Saturday and waited patiently for the movers to arrive so I could watch them pack my life away. Ten hours later I was sitting in my apartment in Austin surrounded by more boxes than I knew what to do with. Losing 200 square feet and a bedroom may not seem like a lot but it is for me since the majority of the space lost was in the kitchen. While I know I have a lot of kitchen gadgets, I still figured there would be some way to cram all the stuff into the cabinets and the pantry. Well, 5 days later I am still staring at stacks of random Pampered Chef products wondering where I am going to put all this stuff. And then there was the mystery of the missing kitchen box. Half of my everyday dishes made it into one box while the other half made it into another box. Well, once we (thanks to help from Mom and Jenny...