Beautiful Things

Haven’t updated the blog in about a week, and a few noteworthy things have happened, so I will do my best to try and capture the moments as vividly as possible. I am writing this post during “charge of quarters” duty which is just a fancy way of saying I have to stay up all freaking night which is going to equate to 26 straight hours of being awake by the time 7am rolls around and I get relieved. So far I have only eaten an entire can of pizza Pringles, a bag of Frito honey bar-b-que twists, some cashews, a JimmyDean breakfast sandwich, a monster, and a Gatorade. I think I’m doing alright for myself if the fattycakes category. The movie line-up consists of Cast Away to make me realize that it could always be worst, Brave Heart to remind me that at least I’m not a huge dufus like Mel Gibson, and Pocahontas to reconnect me to all that is good in the world before I get to go to sleep in the morning. It also doesn’t hurt that John Smith is SEXY. I feel like crap, I need to drink some water before I go delusional and start talking to the cockroaches and little mouse crawling around here.

Illegal 4 day pass:

I was approved for pass last Tuesday morning, and left Tuesday afternoon in a hurry despite leaving behind all of the wonderful people and luxuries Fort Knox has to offer. Little did I know, I was not supposed to take a second stint of vacation. Oops? Not sure how I was supposed to know that, but was woken up halfway through being in Pittsburgh to an angry Major who accused me of playing the system and doing “unheard of” things as a 2^nd lieutenant. He also told me that I may have to come home THAT DAY which was extremely upsetting after waking up half dead with cottonmouth and a dazed brain at 8 o’clock in the morning. Naturally, I started crying. I KNOW, pathetic…just like the last time I cried, which is when I had to leave Pittsburgh the first time. These are the things I cry about, stupid things, things that are miniscule in the big picture. Such a baby. So there I lay sniffling, still drunk, probably making some terrible half-gurgling noise with running mascara from the night before feeling like the biggest idiot because I can’t control my sadness. Not to worry, he called back and I could stay..HA! Worth it. I only got a little reaming when I got back.

The next day I got to see one of my nearest and dearest on her way to Fort Sam Houston to fulfill her awesome career as an Army medic. We just basically hung out, lay on the lawn, went to some bars, saw some friends, and drank…casually. Nothing crazy but it was awesome to see her.

MayhemFest?:

Went to bed early that night because I needed to gear up for the highly anticipated MayhemFest that apparently comes to Pittsburgh every year. I have actually never heard of it. Anyway, it is a sort of screamo/metal/rock?/I don’t know how to describe the music  festival that attracts a sort of angry type crowd. The kind of people who wear those extremely baggy black pants with the crisscrossed chains, paint fake stitches on their faces with black lipstick, chain smoke camel menthols, and generally seem like miserable, devil-worshiping people. Actually, a lot of them do worship the devil, which is fine by me, whatever. I try to be a generally diverse person when it comes to music and do listen to just about everything…but I did not ever listen to this kind before this concert, and frankly summed the people who do listen to this type of music up as huge douche bags. Well some of them probably are still huge douchbags..the military LOVES this type of music, and every time it comes on over loud subwoofers, with some “high-intensity” combat roll play I roll my eyes like “oh brother“ this is the fakest, douchey-est form  of motivation I have ever heard in my ENTIRE LIFE. I, however, had an excellent time at this show. I started my day out crowd surfing, unexpectedly I may add, through a sea of people inspired by screaming middle aged men. I got tossed up about seven times before I realized I had lost my phone…credit card…drivers license…school i.d….military i.d…..yea. Well I eventually found my military i.d., driver’s license, and credit card hours later but the others are, as far as I know, still lost in a heaping pile of garbage and cigarette butts probably in some landfill by now left to decay. I got a new phone. Surprisingly, or maybe not surprisingly at all, I didn’t really care at the time so I decided to burst onto the moshpit scene with 120lbs of pure unadulterated muscle to back it up. The great thing about this moshing was that if you fell down everybody scurried to pick you back up, unlike the horror stories you hear about people getting trampled, curb stomped, tarred and feathered WHAT HAVE YOU and Jesus knows what else. The people at these concerts are the angriest, happiest, most violent in the best way type I have ever met. It is refreshing to meet some people who enjoy getting thrown around, because I thoroughly thoroughly enjoy wrestling around without actual hatred for the person. On one occasion I literally tackled this girl down a small hill and she got up, hugged me, and said I love you. Sweet, I love you too..for the time being. Although she did, unknowingly, accuse one of my friends of being an “angry man on steroids”, and for “purposely throwing people on their heads to try and hurt them”. I guess I might be a little scared too if a very large man with nasty stains all over his shirt, and a bloody eye patch that I didn’t know was ramping around in my area too. He’s not on steroids was my only reply. She was cool though, at one point she gave me some face paint so I could fit in with the cool kids..little did I know she drew the anti-christ symbol on my forehead. What did I care? It got wiped off quickly upon discovery. The only strange thing about these concerts is that people don’t dance. I mean it’s not necessarily dancing music, but any music can be dancing music given the right mindset. Well whatever, we danced, me and mr. alleged steroid, in typical fashion given an open space and probably many confused, staring people. I’m not really sure how to describe this dancing, probably a mix of want-to-be salsa/awkward white person boogie/sweaty mambo. Almost like dancing with the stars..minus the pristine costumes and practice. Maybe more like stomp the yard..without the corny Nick Cannon drum solo. Definitely more animalistic…for sure. We were also hanging out with a 10 year old boy..where the heck were his parents?? I went mud sliding with the little headbanging orphan, he was cool, and it brought a huge smile to his face. I had an awesome time, a culturing experience for sure. Met some great people, love meeting new people. Don’t judge people based on how they look. 

Self Proclaimed Grass:

Well, I’m back in KY now, and have a little less than a month left thankfully. One thing that I just don’t understand is some Army people’s tendencies of self proclamation. I cut through the grass today on the way to my car and a short little stumpy, peabodied man sticks his frito-licking face out the door and proclaims “hey young lady, get off my grass.” This is not the first time I have heard this statement, and this time I was going to challenge it. I replied “Good morning sir, sorry I wasn’t aware this was YOUR grass” and he said “Yea well it’s my grass and I don’t want you walking on it”…What? So I was feeling quite irked at this point and said “Oh, so you planted this grass yourself?” and he responded “Yes I did, and I don’t need you walking on it” WHATTT??? NO you didn’t plant this freaking grass, and you don’t own it..he strait up lied to me, wow, now he is a lying short, stumpy, peabodied frito-licking faced man. A terrible addition to an already terrible combination. In retrospect, I should have told him he was a dead-wrong dirty liar and that it was MY grass and that if I saw or heard of him merely look at it I would personally seek him out and have his peeping face expunged forever. This is what I do to stimulate my mind, argue with old men about grass. So I told him I wouldn’t walk on his sporadic, patchy grass again and to have a good day. The lease I could do was to insult his alleged planting skills, shitty planting skills at that. IT’S GRASS..don’t walk in it?!?? What the heck is it there for…just rip it out and let us roll around in the dirt like the filthy pigs we are, don’t waste the fertilizer, water, and manpower to maintain it. Holy crapo.

3 weeks, 3 days, and a wake up can’t come fast enough.

Wild Child

What does it mean to be called crazy? I don't know, but I've heard it enough times in the last eight years to question whether or not it has a positive or negative connotation. I've heard it over and over throughout high school, college, and now in my just started career as an officer and it is a bit baffling because I am not quite sure what I am doing in order to earn this prestigious title. Thanks.

Its been a few days since the last post, and things have actually gotten quite interesting. We finally got to go out for the 3rd of July, and needless to say the long awaited day off led to some interesting scenarios to say the least. Upon learning that we DIDN'T have an early morning formation me and 10 others packed up and drove to Louisville KY. After a 45 minute drive, me and my girlfriends got to the hotel last and had nowhere to go, so naturally we headed to a public bathroom to do our makeup and pound shots out of cardboard coffee cups chased with redbull. A perfect start to a class filled night.

 This ordeal lasted about an hour until the others got back from dinner. The next phase of this journey consisted of more shots out of cardboard cups in a hotel room with the rest of the crew until about 11pm. After everybody was good and "liquored up" as one of our friends up here always says, we made it to a bar with a very cool open floor plan where there was beer pong set up throughout the bar, random. Things got kinda weird after the hour of midnight.

The funny thing about military situations is that it doesn't matter what conditions the group is under, some people, and there are some in every group, are bound to strap on their drunk goggles and act like bitches in heat. In my short time in the military i have encountered people bump uglies in the most unbecoming of places. What the compulsion is..well that's beyond me. Some of these places included but are not limited too: on top of cardboard boxes in a recycling bin, in a portajohn (classic), in the tall grass during land navigation (not quite as bad, but hopefully they found all of their points by then or else it's totally not worth it), and in a male barracks in the male bathroom. Needless to say I have never partaken in this raunchy behavior. Nobody bumped uglies in Louisville, but there was quite a bit of snogging between some individuals to say the least.

We left the bar around 3am and headed to white castle where I threw all of my pride out the window and pounded about 3 hamburgers and a chicken sandwich to the face without even breathing in a matter of 5 minutes. This was of course after I puked up strait liquor which I'm pretty sure 3rd degree burned my esophagus. After that was time to pass out after repeatedly yelling "cheeseburger on the headboard" for an hour for no reason. It made sense at the time.

We woke up in the morning to the phone ringing to our hotel room, I thought I was dreaming but it was literally ringing for 20 minutes. It was one of our friends, who was at the police department without his shoes, phone, or wallet (apparently he left them in a pile in the street?) He went to the police department the night before and asked them if they had a reservation for him, thinking it was the hotel we were staying at. A seriously hilarious fail on his part. Everybody was called into the brigade commanders office the next day for our first lieutenant ass chewing of the career!! It was whatever, however I almost lost it when he said "you all are a bunch of clowns, uhh, I mean that as a figure of speech, not that you guys are ACTUAL clowns". YEA, NO SHIT I'M NOT THE EMBODIMENT OF RONALD MCDONALD WITH A PAINTED FACE AND A FAKE NOSE. dear God we get it.

Just started my cycle with Golf Company and so far so good with the exception of some douchey comments about muscle cars, and standing around in the rain for hours without even knowing why were standing there. Had a great lift today too, followed by a not so appetizing steak from Applebees afterward. I am going to stop eating meat. I've only been saying that for the past year, so it's bound to happen soon

Slurs

Statements that have caused me to doubletake:

8am this morning, I hesitated to give one of the drill sergeants a high five:
"Too late, if you hesitate you die"....exellent way to start the morning.

Working on stats this morning and couldn't remember who quit training, so I asked the Colonel who replied:
"Cdt Smiley, he was the soulless ginger"...not something you expect out of a Lieutenant Colonel, but ok thats cool at least I got my numbers?

THE BEST THING THAT COULD HAVE HAPPENED MAY HAVE JUST HAPPENED, sorta. kinda, unconfirmed, but still an awesome maybe. I went to talk to the Lieutenant Colonel, my point of contact, about potentially not having to go to Golf Company. He said that he really doesn't foresee them needing me over there and that I may just get to be like everybody else and only have to work one cycle. Relief. Things might just be looking up. This gives me time to get into super shape before Engineer BOLC and to read up on all of the necessary materials to put me above the curve (hopefully) before I get there.

Many combat opportunities are being opened up for women by the end of this year. With these decisions come many opinions and outlooks about these decisions. So here is my opinion, like it or not. Being an engineer, I am more that excited for the opportunity to be a combat engineer, and given the opportunity to be one would thus far be my biggest life accomplishment and dream. Being afforded this opportunity means being held to standard, that is THE MALE STANDARD, so in my opinion there should be no shift in the standard to accomodate females in these branches. At my age, the male standard it 65 pushups, about 70 situps, and a 13:24 2 mile run time which is a completely attainable standard for a female who wants it bad enough. And I do. While I have no problem listening to the doubts and skepticism that many males in combat branches have, and the "why do you feel like you have something to prove" and "you're crazy to want to do something like this" statements heard on a regular basis, I still want to at least get the opportunity to do something that I am passionate about. And to answer the question of "why do you want to do this?" my response is "why did you want to do it?" The answer to want to do something like this is universal, it is not a question of having something to prove. I've wanted to be a 12Bravo since the minute I contracted, so I will try my darndest to make it happen. So, I have made an appointment to get my special forces physical in order to prepare myself for the absolute best case scenario. The upcoming year brings a great deal of uncertainty to say the least.