Libya, The Third War

Tonight President Obama will be trying to decide if we are to intervene in the Libyan war.  It all comes down to humanitarian issues, pretty much domestic violence, and what Obama promised before he was elected President of the United States.

Mind you I didn't vote for Obama and I was a registered Democrat at the time.  Since then I've changed my political party to more suit, though not perfectly, my views.

Do we really need the added expensive of another war?  We aren't even fully out of Iraq, we are full force fighting in Afghanistan and our economy can't handle the drain of helping yet another country find its freedom.  Freedom is far from free when our own populous has to go without because gas prices are sky rocketing in the oil obsessed countries.

They are oil obsessed.  Most of them are fighting over control of their own oil fields.  Their civil unrest is now costing us more at the pump and I'd rather it not start costing us the lives of our American citizens.

I'm not a "liberal hippie" by any means.  I believe that at times war is the necessary decision.  But I don't like the thought that we are going to have to sacrifice more of our military, money, and resources on a doomed humanitarian issue that is called the Libyan war.  Let them fight it out amongst themselves, it went fairly well in Egypt a month ago.  If we go into Libya with guns blazing we'll have to fund a rebuild of their country when we can barely afford to keep our own government afloat.

We don't need foreign oil.  We have the Alaskan pipeline.  We have alternative fuel sources that are being back burnered just because our own government has deals on the table with foreign countries to buy their oil supplies.  How about we fund the alternative fuel projects with the funds that we were going to spend on helping Libya out?

Better yet how about we stop buying from China and buy more American made products.  Sure right now American made products are expensive but isn't buying quality worth it?  Why buy junk from a foreign country when you know its just going to get recalled or fall apart?  Eventually, given that Americans will decide to buy domestic products, our prices will drop and our economy will reach back to the top where it was two decades ago before we started farming out our jobs to foreign countries.

Libya, good luck on your war.  I don't want my country being a part of your domestic violence issues. 

WE ARENT THE WORLD'S POLICE!

T-15

Today I had my third IUI.  Three cycles now of paying out of pocket $200.00 for this procedure.  I have a good feeling about today.  I just hope that I continue to have that good feeling in 15 more days.

The tech nurse performing the procedure said, "you should get your positive result in 15-17 days."  I really hope so.

So I'm not going to stress over this.  I have enough eggs, the sperm count is way high and everything looks promising.

For those of you with no clue what an IUI is I'm hoping that after viewing the video you'll have a bit of a better understanding.

Its The Egg Update

As I type this post I'm waiting to get my call from the fertility clinic on the time scheduled for the IUI tomorrow.  Alas I don't have as many ripe follicles as last cycle.  Again I have only a 5-6% chance to conceive in this cycle.

At best I have one or two more cycles for the clomid therapy.  There are other procedures that can be done and I just might have to explore those options.

I'm ready to be a mom.  I've always wanted to be a mother.  I know I can give to my child the attention, patience, and guidance that it will need.  I am scared.  I'm scared that I will never get the chance to experience motherhood in all its ups and downs.

A woman is most fertile between the ages of 18 and 25.  Most of us aren't ready to be mothers at those ages.  If I had taken that window years ago it wouldn't have been my husband that would have fathered my child it would have been someone else due to the fact that I'm nine years older than my spouse.

New technologies are being developed on egg freezing but for now eggs don't thaw out well at all.  Frozen embryos defrost just fine as well as frozen sperm.  Our eggs are just too fragile.

The good news is that I am fertile, its just my aging eggs, though I still have plenty to fertilize this cycle.  More good news is that my restrictions are lifted.  I'm allowed to cook, clean, exercise and so on but with the standard limitations of my back issues and the fibromyalgia of course.  I like doing housework.  Since I'm a domestic goddess I feel a sense of accomplishment knowing that I have a clean house.  I like it when people come into my house on any given day and see that it is clean.  Okay well its hard to get my husband to pick up after himself but I give him a bit of leeway on that considering military housing doesn't have enough storage space for all the Army gear that the soldiers are issued.  The soldiers need a bedroom all to themselves just to store their gear.

Electric Cars, My Opinion

This is bound to be a short post as it is entirely my opinion.  Though my husband and I were discussing the pros and cons of electric cars last weekend I took my own sweet time to post this particular environmental hazard.  Wait did I just insinuate that electric cars are a bad thing?  YES!

So we won't be using as much gasoline if there are more of these cute electric cars on the road.  We will be using more electricity.  Oh is that bad?  YES!

Most of our electricity is from plants that use coal to fuel their electric output.  Coal is a fossil fuel and is less clean burning than gasoline folks.  So why would any one want to buy an electric car knowing this?  Well most of us forget about where our electricity comes from.

These cars have to be charged up every four hours.  How is that effective?  How does that cut down on our footprint?

Now lets get down to the safety issues.  Have you noticed that this cars are super light weight?  Did you stop to think that light weight isn't such a good thing?  Think about how these cars would look after even a 20 mph accident.  You might as well go out and buy a new one.  Oh and if you need to buy yet another one how is that cutting down on pollution?  The factories will be puffing out more plumes of smoke to make you that new car.  At higher speeds its doubtful you'd walk away without more significant injuries because folks like me we want to keep our gasoline powered vehicles on the road.  We contribute less to pollution and our cars are safer than the electric ones.

Now don't get your dander up.  I'm sure I'm upsetting more than one environmentalist here who thought that electric cars were the perfect solution to our gas problem.  They are a solution I'll give you that, but are they the right one?

Dealing With Tech Support

There are days that I just want to crawl back into bed.  Today happens to be one of them.

I know I mentioned a few days ago that I was going to take 30 days for myself.  Well so far that really hasn't happened.  Everyone deserves a vacation and I'm still waiting to get mine.

For the past several days I've been doing laundry, dishes, cooking, cleaning and paying the bills.  I'm trying to make life that much easier on my soldier.  My back is killing me along with my feet and just yesterday my right hip popped out of socket.  It popped back in then back out and back in repeatedly for a few hours.  Not a pleasant feeling mind you.  So I guess I'll only get to the cooking of the pork loin roast today with the trimmings.  I was going to do more laundry.

My main task today was calling three tech support places about my husband's computer.  Its a Toshiba laptop.  While he was deployed to Iraq, Toshiba in conjunction with Microsoft was offering free upgrades to Windows 7.  However each time my husband tried to file for his free upgrade there was a glitch.  He never got his free copy of Windows 7. 

So this brings me to the next point of the problem.  J's laptop stopped reading DVDs and CDs.  It refused to operate properly and would act like it had PMS.  After sending the computer out for repairs to his extended warranty company they install a new hard drive and DVD/CDROM-RW.  He gets it back and now the main screen is a C prompt.  GREAT!

J calls up the company that just repaired it, gets put on hold and disconnected. I call them back as well.  I then called up Microsoft and they said they couldn't do a thing about it.  The old hard drive had a partition in it that would prevent the OS from being deleted.  Well and good but we don't have the old hard drive now.  I was instructed to call Toshiba.  They wanted to charge me to even talk to a tech because the first warranty with them had expired.  I asked for the Tech Manager. 

It all comes down to this, no one cares if the darn restore disks don't work.  No one cares that there is no longer an OS installed.  J now has to pay out of pocket to get their restore discs or have his computer sent away for another month to have them install another Windows Vista to his laptop. 

This is wrong on so many levels.  First off Toshiba and Microsoft owe him the free upgrade.  Secondly had they fulfilled his request when he requested it numerous times during the offer period we wouldn't be needing a restore disk for his OS we'd have a copy, an actual disc on hand.  I tried to explain this to both companies.  They don't care if he was deployed and couldn't call tech support from Iraq.

So the best I can now offer my spouse when he comes out of the field is the offer that the Tech Manager gave me of two options, pay out or send the computer back with the hopes that they can fix the issue.  If this can't be fixed we have one expensive paperweight.  I just would like to know why the repair company who installed a new hard drive didn't install an OS.  Why?

Army PT Test Changes

Good and bad news for our Army.  They are changing the physical fitness test again.  In the past the changes have been so minor that most haven't noticed.  Guys were long required to have less time on their run than their female counterparts, more situps and more push ups.  While the run difference never changed the other two categories did slightly over the past twenty years.

Now things are about to get ugly.  For those of you on the Fat Boy program you now have no choice but to get into shape and stay in shape.  No more of the last week dieting before your scheduled APFT (Army Physical Fitness Training).  I think its about time.  A soldier, whether female or male, shouldn't be so fat as to have their uniform stretched to the limits showing their beer belly or rolls of flab.  Often I've been asked if I were an active duty soldier.  I always thought I was too fat to be even thought of as one.  However, since moving to this installation I've seen many a female that is my size or even larger and I wonder.  I wonder how the heck can they pass the APFT? 

There is no need for a soldier to be carrying around that extra weight.  You've got a job to do and you have to stay fit.  Put down that Jethro sized bowl of oreos and milk and grab a stick of celery soldiers because your days of over eating are over with.  There is no way you can possible do well on the new test system with your gut and flabby limbs.

The new APFT is now called an ACRT, Army Combat Readiness Test.  You will be having to do jumps, sprints, rows, slalom runs, balance beams, casualty drags, and ammo carries.

"The key difference is between ‘readiness' and fitness," said Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, the Army's deputy commanding general for initial training.  "It's one thing to be fit … it's quite another thing to be ready for the things we are being asked to do. And in our case, it's becoming a ‘tactical athlete.' "  http://www.military.com/news/article/armys-big-pt-test-changes.html?ESRC=eb.nl 


"Soldiers will be required to hurdle over gates, negotiate barricades, drag a casualty, balance with weighted ammo cans, maneuver through a simulated shooting course, do 100 yards of wind sprints and weave through a slalom course.
And it's all timed."

Good luck to all of the soldiers out there.  Time for you to make healthy food decisions so that you'll be more able to pass this new test.

Coping With Nightmares

Alone I wander through the dark streets.  My shadow quavers in the faint sodium glow.  Eerily the sound of my footfalls echo, where are the night sounds of the frogs and crickets?  Why is there no one else out walking tonight?

From the left I hear a sound, Oh God NO!  Okay now how do I get out of this dream?

Yes, yet another bad dream in the early morning hours.  The man that abused me all those years ago has again cropped up into my dream state.  I somehow knew it would happen.  It was triggered by the book I've been reading.  The heroine of the novel has been abused.  She escaped much as I did but I didn't have to fake my death.  Now this heroine is having to face her past that she ran from.  Does it ever stop?  Do the dreams ever completely go away?  I have to finish this novel.  I know it will have a happy ending as it is the only type this particular author ever writes.  I too will have my happy ending when I awake from the bad dream to realize that it was just that, a dream.  Unfortunately my dream was based on truth, my past.

I know that some of my readers can understand these nightmares.  Hopefully most of  you that have them don't have them often.  I wonder if I'll ever be fully healed.  I'm just so thankful that I have my wonderful, understanding husband to be there for me.  When I awake from these nightmares my husband is almost always there to help me deal with them and to give me that hug when I'm ready.  Thank you J. 

For those of you out there battered, beaten and traumatized please find a way to get out and get some help.

For my friends and readers that are survivors of domestic abuse this video is for you.