Ever lose your brain?

Yesterday, I:

• Left Aaron's transfer board in the apartment, but thankfully he is awesome and managed six car transfers without it.
• Decided to purchase a 60 lb. box of bookshelf from Target. This is dumb when you're as small as I am.
• Left my keys in the shopping cart and frantically searched for them for half an hour, all the while knowing that someone in Target had them in their cart. Thankfully, she returned them just as I was begging the employees to page the whole store.
• Tried to kill my husband by leaving his back wheels off the wheelchair. These wheels catch the chair when it reclines. 
• Got nasty with the urology desk people because we'd been waiting the duration of the appointment and couldn't get a time hack out of anyone. Thankfully, Aaron is doing fine (can we all smile about that?) and I don't feel that leaving compromised his care. Urology has been difficult and we'll deal with them later.
• Booked a flight on November 20th for apparently, November 21st and not the 28th. The return flight was right (this Friday) but US Airways scrapped the whole ticket and there went $357. Yay me. I suppose I'll try to take care of that today or tomorrow. In better news, she's coming today.

I think I'm done for now. Hope you all had much better Mondays!

Here Lately...

Things are going. They are going quite well actually, but it's a new life and lifestyle which require adjustments. Aaron, of course, is doing great with it. He accepts things and moves on. I have a tendency to spaz out and get really upset  over little things. I am learning that there is work to do after bedtime. The housework never really ends! The journey to take your trash out here is ridiculous. You go down to the first floor and hang a right. Go allll the way to the end of the hall and out two non-wheelchair accessible doors. Go to the left and down the hill to the dumpsters, which are in the parking out and off a curb that doesn't have a ramp. To gain access by wheelchair, you have to take the long way out the front doors. And we're close to the trash- the people in the west wing are just up a creek. Needless to say, I usually end up waiting until there is a wheelchair size load and wheel it down.

In other not-awesome news, our company has given up another limb. SSG Kiel Vickers is now here. He is stable, in good spirits, conscious, without any sign of any brain injury. Other than the at-the-knee left leg amputation, he seems to be doing quite well. He's a good guy, smart tech, handsome, and funny. There is a wonderful life ahead of him.

And it just sucks. The company is only 44 or so people, so we're at a 10% injury rate. And even though I was there, I can't imagine what the families are going through. There was the broken leg from a blast, the back injury on a guy no one knew, and then Aaron. I didn't watch anything unfold because when shit got crucial it was happening to me. I have no idea what it's like to have a husband deployed while others are coming back seriously injured. I can't even imagine.

I'm in the holiday spirit, or at least trying. Hubby got all sweet on me tonight when I told him that we either had to embrace it or I was going to let it all go and not care at all (which is how I naturally lean, but I fight it every year). He helped me pick out more Christmas stuff.

We're good. It's gonna be okay. It's not always easy. And as a friend posted to me tonight: Faith makes things possible, not easy.

Words to remember.

Getting There.

Today was better. I think feeling so poorly physically that it just really brought me down. I don't think I'll ever let a doctor give me an opiate ever again. At least not if I'm going to be conscious immediately afterwards.

Aaron and I both woke up in great moods, and had good days. He is just so excited about everything, even getting his ass kicked by his physical therapist, "Bunny the Destroyer" (not kidding- that's her moniker). I'm just utterly amazed by him every day, a hundred times a day.

His hands can extend far enough now that I think he could hold a medium size playground ball. This both excites me and breaks my heart. He works so hard to do so much we as able-bodied people don't even think about. I have no idea how it feels to get around in a wheelchair and that be my freedom. He never, ever complains about losing his legs. I mean, holy hell.

I am a lucky woman.

Whinin' and Cryin'.

Ugh. Apparently opiates are awesome for mack-truck migraines, but the "drug hangover" is almost as bad as the headache. I seriously feel like I'm detoxing or getting hit with a baseball bat. I bummed around today, cleaning and organizing. I got a lot done but had I been able to stand up straight or move faster than a great-grandma, I could've gotten a lot more done. My MIL went with Aaron today, and bless her for it. It was a busy day.

So by the end of the month everyone in the company should have gone on R&R. I feel completely gypped. No in-uniform airport reunion, no hang-out time, no being a family with our little dogs. I will probably feel gypped at homecoming, too. Aaron is busting his ass literally to exhaustion everyday. Right now, he is struggling to make a fist with his hands. He sweats so much at night I lay an extra sheet and a towel down for him.

I wouldn't pick any other life for myself because simply, I'm spoiled rotten in love. We love each other to the ends of the Earth and back. When I told him how awful I had felt all day, he put his arms around me and leaned his wheelchair back all the way down so I could sort-of lay on him. He let me order too much sushi because I thought I was really hungry (apparently the muscles around your stomach can be sore from drugs, too). Seriously- I have nothing to complain about.

And I try really hard not to let other people's complaining get to me because life still goes on. But some of it seems so out-of-perspective. Or even trite. I'm personally tired of all the blog memes because no one hardly says anything juicy. I don't care what you're wearing- I want to know more about you. I almost can't handle the minor military-getting-in-the-way complaint, but I was once so guilty of it, too. I'm not being fair, and I admit it. Life is life. Please, bitch away.

But there's so much pain out there. I won't know for about two years if we're going to join the ranks of those who only ever try to conceive. It's definitely on my mind that I won't ever be pregnant. I tell you though, if we go IVF we'll go balls to the wall full-stem the first try. But then I think that we could gamble on IVF, or put that money towards an adoption. Ugh. And we have to actually settle down soon, too. That is so foreign and weird to me. We want to rent for awhile, but then with the country's economy like it is who knows what these grants will be in a few years. (We get vehicle and home modification grants- and there are organizations out there who match or help out in other ways, too).

I need shelves in the apartment. I want to paint (yes, rumor has it we can. I'll ask for forgiveness instead of permission, though.). We need a lot of sheets. My mind races at times with everything. Appointments, appointments, appointments.

All I want, I think, is to go back to normal. I want to bitch about stupid shit. I'd take those money-talks-over-Gchat over this any day. I want to care what people are wearing or see pictures of their kids. I do. I want R&R, and homecoming. I want to decorate my house with sexually-suggestive signs about my EOD tech getting lucky. All that shit.I want my battle buddies back.

But if I didn't know before, I do now. And if I get a moment to be superficial, it's only a moment. Everything's different now, and again I am so utterly blessed I have no idea what to do with myself  but I still get a little mad, and I might always feel a little gypped. I might always judge people on how little pain they've experienced, which isn't fair because it can't be helped. Some people are just really lucky like that.

And if that's my best, it's between me and God. It'll have to do.

New Digs.

We've graduated from in-patient care! We have a great little 2 bedroom ADA apartment on the hospital grounds. It's where most of the wounded warriors live while they recover. Some have the option to go off-post, but seeing as we don't own wheelchair accessible transportation that option isn't very reasonable for us at the moment. It comes furnished, with lots of storage space and some basics. Everything was gathered from the hospital room and brought over to our new place.

I wish had been there for the packing and all the discharge information, but 430am this morning I went into the ER with one of the most wicked migraines I have ever experienced. I get a classic migraine about once a year, and tension headaches a little more often. This was a double whammy of both. Some strong narcotics and 10 hours later, I was finally released. Just in time for Aaron and his parents to finish up unloading everything from the hospital room into the apartment.

I haven't fully recovered from the lag of drugs, but my head is clear and hopefully I'll sleep well tonight. In our own place, with the future bright ahead of us.

I couldn't have said it better.

This is what my sister-in-law has to say about what's been going on.

Family is ultimately a verb. It knows no blood nor bounds. When you find it, you do it.

Aaron's Caring Bridge.

I WILL be back soon. I have so much inside of me I can't wait to get out over here. My soul is good- it is settled. It has had all it can take for a little while. And that means there is room to do this again.

Love to you all.