Memorial Day is a holiday I dread. The Google snapshot will probably give you a bit of a clue as to why:
Memorial Day is a holiday that very much, in my opinion, divides this nation. We have the supporters that recognize the holiday represents a moment to honor the loss of human beings who died while serving this nation. The second group enjoys the holiday as the dividing mark that summer is here and sales are to be enjoyed. This dichotomy was captured quite well in an article I found this morning, How Memorial Day Went From Somber Occasion to Summer Celebration. Not mentioned in the article, but also of great importance, is the reality as more and more people forget this time as a means to remember the sacrifice of our nation’s deceased service members veterans and currently serving military personnel are being thanked for their service.
This image, floating around social media, gets right to the point. There IS a difference!
I definitely cringe when I see veterans being thanked for their service on Memorial Day.
It is also equally awkward for me when I’m told, “Happy Memorial Day!”
I know it’s said with the best intentions but for me, I experienced our unit losing one of our own. I have not corrected those closest to me who make this mistake but as they get a better sense of my first deployment we tiptoe into this area of what means what and why certain things are important.
My unit held an in-country memorial service for Captain Sean Brock who died as a result of his injuries on February 2, 2005.
To me, Memorial Day will never be about the start of summer. To me, Memorial Day will never be about the sales.
On this day, I wonder how his family is doing. I will go about my day doing quiet activities with my own family but I will wonder how his siblings, parents, and widow are holding up. I will (and always will) want them to know he was cared for by our command. He was respected. His sacrifice does not deserve to go unnoticed because the meaning of this holiday gets muddled by society’s focus on attributing other meanings upon this particular day.
Those of us in the camp staying true to the original purpose behind today do not ask for much. Take a moment for those we lost. That’s it. A simple moment of silence to pay respect for every person who served and died for this nation.
Don’t mind the detour but I’m talking puppies and money today!
I am quite happy to share with you all we added a second Cane Corso to the family. I stayed up with this cute fur ball last night and now it’s my husband’s turn for the night shift. My newest kiddo is not actually the focus of today’s writing but I couldn’t help but share. Month after month I make promises I’ll write more often and when I make you–my dear audience–wait, I owe you something special. Hence sharing our good news. Honestly, who doesn’t like seeing photos of puppies?! (Thanks for sticking around. If we lived closer, I might just bake you something, too. I am quite handy in the kitchen and my friends enjoy the alcohol-infused treats I make plus the non-alcoholic versions.)
Tonight’s entry is really an appetizer; tomorrow’s blog post is the entrée.
I am on Refinery 29’s email list and there was an article that spoke a lot to me recently. I graduated last year with my Master’s degree and the author Erin Lowry pointed to an area that is a bit of a weakness for me, the art of negotiating money. As a veteran, I feel I am in a position many other veterans know as well. When we served our pay was based on pay grade and time in service. If you want to check how those numbers have changed over time, please look at the military pay charts on the Defense Finance and Accounting Service website. The amounts are not inclusive of all pay, just basic pay, but this information gives you a decent starting point to understand negotiation is not a thing. If you want more money, you get yourself promoted ASAP.
For some military occupational specialities versus others, that’s a fairly easy task to accomplish. I won’t go down that road today.
Her article resonated with me quite well recently as I’ve struggled to find a comfortable wage after separating from the Marine Corps. After starting our family in 2010, I’ve become more financially focused as I realize money doesn’t stretch as far as it used to and many unexpected events–like my two bouts of unemployment–add further stress. I try not to let money be the dominant factor to express I am a successful person but there is a level of financial stability I have not yet obtained that frustrates me.
The level of financial transparency through sites like Refinery 29 where people talk about the debt they carry, the cost of their mortgages, and how much income they make becomes a motivator for me to advocate for my particular needs. In the almost four years in my current position, I never thought I needed to negotiate my pay. In a couple different ways over the past year, I learned of pay discrepancies that I felt could not be overlooked. Armed with the confidence my work prowess speaks for itself and I bring many useful lessons from my educational background directly into the work environment, I tackled one of the toughest conversations I’ve ever had. I told my supervisor I am sick of getting grossly underpaid. I don’t want to feel like I need to be one of those extremely frugal moms who gets a kick out of extreme couponing, making their own soaps and stuff, and shopping only secondhand. (Trust me, I like food sales, but not couponing. I like using a homemade vinegar cleaner and also using the heavy-duty store-bought name brand clog remover. I equally like buying new things and finding something special on Thredup for $8.)
While working on my degree, my lower pay was not as much of a setback as I had the ability to use my GI Bill entitlement to compensate financially. Without my tax-free cushion, I know I cannot yet afford certain experiences I’d truly like, such as saving for a trip to Hawaii or going on a cruise. I am leery to put the cost of three plane tickets to visit family back east on a credit card because I know my husband won’t be employed for two more years while he completes his education. I don’t want to cut back on some of my favorite gourmet ingredients, like the Trader Joe’s creamy Toscana soaked in Syrah, because I am more the woman who likes a killer home-cooked meal than a packed restaurant, even though I’m not getting the treat of being waited on and someone else cleans the dishes. I just want to earn money to support my family and provide for the fun things in life as well.
In talking more about the good life tomorrow, I’ll focus a bit more on the positive numbers that compromise my good life and those pesky numbers that put a damper on where I want to be for personal and professional satisfaction.
Last week, I heard back from the VA. Yet again, they don’t consider my chest pains to be service-connected. This reality kind of floored me. I actually opened up to them in my December 2016 claim and while it might sound silly to say such a thing, in 2007, I kept things simple.
I didn’t tell them about Captain Brock dying. I didn’t tell them about my kind of work. I didn’t emphasize my exposure to mortars, although that information was part of what I listed in my records about different types of exposures while in the Marine Corps. Back then, I was dealing with chest pains and I knew I didn’t have them before I served. They started at the tail end of my first deployment, continued after I returned, and remained a part of my life through separation. I just needed the VA to understand at my point of separation the chest pains were still ongoing and I felt they were related to my service in Iraq in OIF 2-2.
If I had realized what a miserable experience it is dealing with the VA on the disability compensation side of the house, I think I would have pushed harder to find the right medical support while I was in. For the few times I was willing to subject myself to medical about this condition, every person wrote ‘non cardiac origin’ for the pains but no one wrote in a diagnosis or suggested getting additional feedback on my situation. What’s more infuriating is the parts where it reads ‘exercise induced stitch.’ Seriously, in the twelve years I’ve dealt with these pains only the primary care provider I’ve dealt with most recently has delved further into this issue and offered different suggestions because the pains were getting to the point they were destroying my quality of life during waking hours and would interrupt my sleep.
For over a year now I’ve wanted to have a conversation with you all about the Pre-and Post-Deployment Health Assessments and I think with this other VA encounter, I have the right foundation for this discussion.
The VA does not know our deployments the way we do and part of the problem is also the way the system requires ticking off boxes, ineffectually asking and not asking the right questions. The forms we complete do not necessarily represent the types of situations we may encounter; let’s be honest here, the VA will never have records from the Marine Corps and/or the US government that 175 United States service members died during my deployment and these numbers best represent the information I was feed every day as part of my work in our operations center. I only know this information because I was determined to find a way to discuss my deployment, to shed light on other aspects of war no one seems to look closely at but is an important job all the same. I am only privileged to know this much of the extent of my deployment thanks to Military Times data.
In cases like mine my work was classified secret so how was I suppose to honestly fill out the forms? As well, even if I could be honest, there also is not a sense of privacy to complete the forms properly not that I would have trusted completely it in full disclosure. On my first deployment, I was the only woman on my team so I felt implied pressure to not be the “weak link” and during the second deployment a lot of stress from the first deployment crept up that I was not willing to discuss with my command. Nor was my situation helped by the fact my chest pains occurred on deployment and yet again, no real resolution came out of getting them checked out.
My apologies I currently do not have snapshots of my first deployment paperwork. eBenefits is being quite a disappointment and again not allowing me access to my military records. The next time it’s available, I’ll try to download all my copies so I can share those details with you. For now though, we can press forward using information from my second deployment documentation, the pre-and post-deployment health assessments.
This form was filled out on July 11, 2006It’s kind of funny I still had my maiden name on my pre-deployment health assessment. I was already married by then.
I’ve cut off segments of the documentation as my copies contain my Social Security Number but for greater clarity on this issue, below are fuller snapshots of the pre-deployment health assessment form that existed during my period of service.
Below is the updated version of the Pre-Deployment Health Assessment Form:
The revamp of the Post-Deployment Health Assessment is also of great concern to me, and I think all veterans of this era should consider how the inadequacies of the earlier form shape what sort of service/deployment experience is considered valuable, dangerous, and potentially traumatic. The forum in which service members were offered to complete their forms is equally as important. I can remember completing the first form in a classroom with a number of guys, classroom style as though we were taking an examination for a grade. It was really a matter of “everyone’s got to do it”. You fill out your form by hand and turn it back in. You don’t want to get called out for your answers and you just want to make it back home.
I don’t recall completing the Post-Deployment Health Assessment at the end of my second deployment but most of the handwriting is distinctly mine; there are only a few segments where the medical personnel filled in information. Coming home was very rushed that time. I can remember meeting my husband and his mother and sister at the Sheridan, Wyoming airport but I cannot remember who picked me up in California. I remember having issues with my military gear being stuck on the conveyer belt and an older gentlemen picking up my pack like it was nothing, hoisting it up so I could tuck my arms into the shoulder pads and settle it on my back. (To everyone who was part of my transition home, I do not make this statement about not remembering your support lightly. Coming home was that much of a blur. I didn’t have a moment to catch my breath and will still say that process didn’t start until I left 3rd MAW in late May 2007 for terminal leave.)
My chest pains are the only thing I shared with the VA as a serious issue in 2007 and again, I am making the choice to share so much personal information because I don’t necessarily see our system getting better if there is a significant gap between what people expect their service to be like and the reality of the experience. I hope by cracking open an issue like poorly constructed pre-and post-deployment health assessments provides a lenses for organizations like the VA to understand where they must also take a step back and learn from veterans what deployments are like. I also hope current service members look at their needs before the needs of the organization they serve; at some point, we all leave the service and our personal health cannot take a back seat because we didn’t want to look like malingers/didn’t want to lose camaraderie/didn’t want to let down the team when a medical issue should have prevented us from deploying.
When I also decided to share with the VA this go around the fact I’ve dealt with tinnitus in the last few years and for a shorter duration, moments of hearing loss, I expected to have them listen. I thought it was fairly reasonable to be ‘heard’ since I have recorded mortar exposure in my records but never sought treatment because I didn’t notice anything wrong at the time.
Right now my hearing is not to the point where I’ve lost full functionality and I sincerely hope it doesn’t degrade further but the hearing loss does scare me. (The tinnitus, on the other, is mostly annoying and only occasionally causes pain.) These issues make me realize I cannot continue to take my hearing for granted and I should plan more for down the road if it degrades to the point where hearing aids might be needed. For now though, I am pretty good about asking people to repeat themselves when I need them to and I remind my daughter to come into the same room if she wants to talk to me. (She tries to yell from upstairs but I’m going to miss a lot of what she’s jabbering about so I make her come down and talk to me anyways.)
I am already past my bedtime (Seriously, it’s 10:45 pm!!!) but in closing, take a moment to look at the October 2015 form. It is much more inclusive. (Please excuse the fact I cannot obtain a good snapshot that shows on each page the form is not to be handwritten.)
Yesterday, I volunteered with a handful of other veterans to be part of a local community collaboration sharing our stories interwoven with pieces of The Odyssey for Odyssey Home: A Veteran Performance. The Chandler Public Library held this event called Creating Peace From Conflict at the Chandler Center For the Arts in partnership with Arizona State University and Veterans For Peace. We also had Veteran Vision Project photos on site for attendance goers to see along with the individual narratives associated with each photograph. Once the footage is available, I’ll provide the link.
This collaboration starting off with group drumming and continued with our storytelling mixed with selections from The Odyssey. A few musical pieces were played by Guitars for Vets and another veteran, Ahmad Daniels was there as a representative for Veterans For Peace, also sharing his story. I know the event was scheduled to conclude with audience engagement, sort of a Q&A opportunity. I only stayed for the Odyssey performance as I had another engagement in the afternoon and with today being my daughter’s birthday, I wanted to make headway Saturday on some other issues I’ve currently slacked on.
The theme of the performance was homecoming and I am quite thankful the event started with the group drumming. While I did not choose to drum (I am embarrassed by my lack of rhythm) the sounds that filled the room reminded me of the wonderful performance given by citizens of Sao Vicente when I visited Cape Verde in high school. My peers, teachers, and I landed to a beautiful musical performance at the airport that reminds me still music is a thread shared globally; we may not always understand each other’s words and actions but music binds us in such a spiritual way.
I loved being reminded of a place that was my home for a short period of my life. Three weeks may not be an eternity but it’s sufficient time to be welcomed as a stranger, treated like a daughter, and remembered as a friend. I am forever grateful for that experience and everyone who welcomed us into their country, their homes, and let us savor their culture that we might never have experienced in our lives had our paths not crossed.
The airport in Sao Vicente
I think I was better able to embrace my role as a participant yesterday feeling like I was welcomed to this group much like how I was welcomed into Cape Verdean life.
My cohort of veterans included an ASU professor, my close friend and fellow ASU student, and a future student. For our individual tales, we provided the audience a better glimpse of ‘homecoming’ as experiences shaped by individual perception and built a bridge that homecoming is not exactly a single finite moment in time, but a process. I focused on the more immediate aspects of coming home to family tragedies and feeling like I did not fit into my life stateside.
I think a vital part of the construction of this storytelling was how well Robin Rio and her students shaped the music performance. I met Robin back in the fall of 2014 when I started my graduate degree at ASU. She is an Associate Professor with the School of Music and the Director of ASU’s Music Therapy Clinic. I interviewed her to gain a better understanding of ASU’s chapter of Guitars for Vets.
Looking back, I did not ask great interview questions, but I think we all have moments like that in our lives where our place as students does not necessarily provide us a sufficient lenses to see and understand the larger context of our community because we are also shortsighted about more immediate concerns like passing a class, juggling work, and testing our fit with fellow students. Seeing Guitars for Vets on campus though did inspire me to get out of my comfort zone about trying a musical instrument. I purchased a Taylor guitar awhile back and now, with my reduced commute, can commit more to my goal of learning the acoustic guitar. (Maybe I’ll be able to play a song before the year ends!)
This talented bunch just wow me; there’s so much musical talent in this group. I cannot wait to share the performance so you can understand how beautifully they play.
Good afternoon, everyone. The video for the Chandler Public Library’s America in Times of Conflict: She Went to War panel I served on March 11th is now posted. I consider myself still somewhat of a beginner when it comes to public speaking and as such, have not watched the video yet. I think if I do and see how nervous I was, I might not be willing to share it with you all today. (I love written storytelling but I am dipping my toe into the territory of oral histories.)
I agreed to be a panelist to show support for my dear friend, Nancy Dallett. She is the Assistant Director of the Office of Veteran and Military Academic Engagement at Arizona State University and she is quite passionate about oral histories. She knew a past misstep with another oral history project left me somewhat reluctant to take on another but the way this project was shaped is what changed my opinion on the matter. What I do like about a panel is the interpretative distance the moderator plays with the panelists. She directs the conversation and keeps it in check, but her influence on what is stated via certain questions is tempered by the panelists.
I am quite proud of the types of questions asked of my fellow panelists and I. Often times, I feel it is hard for us as women to be asked truly valuable questions outside the context of victimization. I get stuck with questions that tiptoe around or center on the issues of sexual harassment and sexual assault within the military service branches and while I think it is important not to minimize those social problems, I think it is quite valuable our society continues to also see the professional opportunities for women in military service and the opportunities they can have post-servicing to enhance their lives and their family legacies. Situations like the recent nude photo sharing being discussed in the news can impact the willingness of women to join and/or to have their families’ support when considering service in one of our military branches. (The ‘Marines United’ nude photo sharing scandal came up as one of the questions asked by our audience.) As a female veteran, I want people who hear and participate in these conversations to understand any person (man, woman, or child) can be victimized at any point in his or her lifetime; it is more imperative we look for ways to make our society safer through education and awareness for everyone, not just groups of people or individual persons, and to instill appropriate punishments on the perpetrators so as to give the best measure of justice to the victim(s) of heinous deviant acts like this photo scandal.
Again, I want to reiterate the questions asked were quite considerate so as to not give you the wrong impression the panel was skewed far to the victimization spectrum of women’s issues. General themes included our motivations for service, expectations of what Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam were prior to serving overseas, the reality of our living/working situations abroad, and concern over whether we thought our service had a positive impact in our lives.
Fair warning, the video is lengthy. At almost two hours, you might want to set aside time to listen to it in its entirety or skip around for shorter conversations. My daughter asked a question of me near the tail end of the audience Q& A section (proud Momma moment here!) so I hope you her piece of the presentation. I didn’t expect she would actually have something to ask although she did ask before the panel began if it was necessary.
Take care and enjoy.
(If you have any tips on how to improve my presence as a panelist, I’d love to hear back from you.)
I write to you all tonight about an issue of privilege: going out to eat with friends and family. These are some first world problems so please don’t scoff that I am taking up a tiny space of the internet to talk about a local establishment and a local veteran. As my usual followers know, I try to talk about some larger social issues but a local veteran I know shared an article about a fellow Iraq veteran being refused access into the newly opened Dierks Bentley Whiskey Row in Gilbert. This local issue is something I don’t believe I should gloss over just because there are some bigger ticket issues happening on a daily basis. Thanks for your patience for my views on this matter and my experience at the restaurant.
I am a Dierks Bentley fan and have, for quite some time, been excited about his new restaurant opening in my town. I did not want to be like fellow veterans and decide to not to check out this establishment without actually taking the time to check out the business to form my own opinion. There are always parts of any interaction that are not necessarily brought to light in subsequent tellings and the reasons behind these exclusions may be a matter of time, space, privacy, cultural sensitivity, personal bias, and so on.
The East Valley Tribune wrote yesterday about Marine veteran Brandon Andrus being denied admittance into Whiskey Row because he has neck tattoos , including a highly noticeable “22” discussed in the article. I don’t expect everyone to know about how problematic suicide is within the veteran community but the “22” is a mark to promote awareness about the high veteran suicide rate in our nation. This veteran though was moved enough by the issue he made a choice to wear this cause on his body for the remainder of his life. (I would recommend anyone interested in learning more about bringing awareness to veteran suicide, check out Mission 22.)
A veteran is at the center of the story but this conversation is larger than one veteran being inconvenienced and embarrassed. Our society is constantly changing and cultural attitudes regarding tattoos are anything but consistent. I was quite curious to see if there was a publicized policy at Dierks Bentley’s Whiskey Row regarding neck tattoos. After all, it’s easy enough to find communication at many establishments reading “No shirt, no shoes, no service”, “We Reserve the Right to Refuse Service to Anyone”and “Firearms Not Allowed” but no such communication is shown on the doors. (Additionally, the “No Firearms” sign is not posted on the door but sat atop the hostess station. I am making an assumption here it’s posted there so as to not ruin the look of these beautiful doors.)
Whiskey Row Gilbert, Arizona
Now I also wanted to look at the second layer of the situation discussed in yesterday’s article: tattoos themselves. My concern was whether the restaurant is opposed to tattoos generally, visible tattoos, or neck tattoos as expressed in the article. It was possible the Tribune staff writer Jim Walsh was not privy to all information about the company’s policy. His article does not discuss if the policy is consistent among all locations or what police department recommended the policy. I am not criticizing him because I do not know what constraints were placed on his article but if we are looking critically at society, we should ask, Where do the rules come from? How consistently are the rules applied? What evidence do we have that supports these rules “work”?
I did not photograph the staff because it would be inappropriate to do so without their permission but it’s apparent the company is not opposed to hiring personnel with tattoos. During the course of my experience (waiting for a table, eating my meal, and waiting for the check) I checked out nearly every staff member I could recognize. While the security staff and bussers wore Whiskey Row shirts, the servers and hosts did not so it was imperative to look for other behavioral cues clusters of females were staff and not customers loitering around waiting for tables. I saw tattoos large and small. Staff members had back pieces, leg pieces, and arm pieces, but not a single neck or face tattoo. I was not seated at the bar to evaluate whether the bartenders had limitations on the placement of tattoos or tattoos at all.
By comparison, Whiskey Row highly sanitized their Instagram. The page for Gilbert does not have a lot of photographs yet but selling tattoo free bodies, like the photograph below, is already becoming the message being presented by the company. If the Gilbert Instagram takes lessons from the Scottsdale Whiskey Row, it will be more about selling traditional female sex appeal (heavy imagery of cleavage, midriffs, and short shorts) for its particular bar scene. We do have a college crowd because of the local community colleges and Arizona State University but I have high doubts businessmen thought about the fact we do not have Mill Avenue like Tempe.
In comparison, look at how the East Valley Tribune portrayed Brandon Andrus and his son:
Which comes across as more offensive?!
After today’s visit, I don’t think Brandon is missing out on much. My outing was unsuccessful in my eyes for reasons that 100% had nothing to do with a highly visible tattoo. For my newbies, you can learn more about my third tattoo here. I don’t think the right management is in place nor is there the right mindset for customer service.
There are a lot of wonderful bar establishments in the Gilbert/Queen Creek area the management can learn from if they want Whiskey Row to be successful. Thirsty Lion is one of the newest additions and while it lacks the faux outdoor space created in Whiskey Row (Sorry, I couldn’t get a photo of it) the drink prices are better and the quality of food is fantastic. Additionally, since it is located in the San Tan Village mall, you can get any necessary gift or personal shopping done before or after your meal/drinks. Postino’s, also located in Downtown Gilbert, has $5 wine and beer prices seven days a week from 11am to 5pm. One of their staff members was so kind to bring out some grilled chicken for my husband’s service dog one day, and while I’ve never expected that kind of service the attitude there sets a bar that is not easily surpassed. Bar Vinedo in Queen Creek offers a quieter bar scene but they also have live music nights, a wine club, and a cigar menu if that’s your thing. I don’t smoke but I know some friends who love having a cigar now and then. This place has my favorite fries, too!!!
I am also more critical when people fail at meeting customer service expectations. I’ve worked in customer service since I was sixteen so it’s easy to spot those who do it well and those who are just collecting a paycheck. If you want a great customer service experience (and I’m not talking bar food here) in Gilbert, you can learn from the staff at other places like Snooze and Liberty Market. FYI, check out the tattoos on their staff, too. Romeo’s Euro Cafe is additionally one of the top contenders for food quality and excellent customer service. We grabbed our dessert tonight from Romeo’s because we would not wait for what we presumed would be a mediocre dessert at Whiskey Row. (I’ve loved every cake at Romeo’s so far and I love whiskey so this cake hit the spot after our poor dinner experience.)
My family and I waited for an hour and 15 minutes for a table at Whiskey Row. What was really pathetic is we noticed these particular booths behind us (plus the one we were later somewhat reluctantly given when our time came up) sat empty for the duration of our wait time until 5:30 pm. A restaurant knowingly preferred not to seat smaller parties in this area and was willing to lose a profit for approximately 2 hours!!! Mind you, these also were not the only empty areas in the restaurant. My husband and I noticed 7 different seating arrangements sat empty for similar durations of time meanwhile a small squad of hostesses informed restaurant patrons wait times would be between one hour and 15 minutes and an hour and 30 minutes. You should have seen the looks on some people’s faces, particularly individuals older than us.
The food wasn’t even worth the unnecessary wait. My husband received a small portion of chicken and one waffle that set us back $14. Furthermore, our server did not pay good attention to our orders and added on two beers for him although the first beer he choose was not available nor did she ever ask if we wanted additional beers during the almost hour long dinner we had there. (Please know I don’t jump on sites like Yelp because I don’t want to be known as someone who complains about food service and I implore you to check out my Instagram so you know I like encouraging others to find great tasting food options.)
I will end my rant for the day but I just needed to say something. I don’t want anyone to go to our local Whiskey Row and think it is representative of our larger restaurant community. A lot of places get things right both in terms of food quality and quality of service. A lot of places are veteran friendly. A lot of places don’t have ridiculous unwritten policies for tattoos. Whiskey Row has a lot of expections to live up to and it will fail if it does not consider the community in which it is placed.
In light of my recent conversation about re-opening my claim with the VA about my chest pains, I write to you today to share an article about Amie Muller. She is a veteran I never heard of until I read about her death but her role as an educator discussing burn pits in Iraq is a conversation we must continue to move forward. I am putting the story in here directly for your convenience and I implore you to share it with others this week. The article can be shared via social media directly from military.com’s website.
Burn pits are something I’ve heard of, but the items I’ve burnt are on a significantly smaller scale which is why I’ve never looked much into where all the burn pits were located. Here are some places that I stopped at or lived at over the course of the two deployments where burn pits were located so it is very possible to understand now why the medical personnel marked environmental exposure on my post deployment health assessment.
Camp Al Asad
Camp Al Taqaddum (Camp TQ)
Camp Fallujah
Camp Ramadi
Kuwait
My Marines and I would burn documentation, including letters from home, and printer cartridges which are so simple compared to the mass burning at burn pits. (Other than these items, Corporal Vaughn–one of my work peers–and I burned Captain Brock’s cover and holster.) Marines I met have worst stories; these individuals have burned feces in the earlier days of the Iraq War but this is the first time I’ve read a personal story about health consequences from living around burn pits.
The story about Amie, shown below, is taken directly from military.com. The Star Tribune article about her battle is available here. Again, please read and share. She was an advocate for others in sharing her story and it doesn’t take much for us to continue what she started.
My entry will be quite short. I am currently in the middle of crafting a post about recently going back through the disability claims process with the Department of Veterans Affairs but it is appropriate to take a break to share that today is my 33rd birthday.
I am very blessed to make it to 33 years of age. I came home from Iraq the first time on my 21st birthday and my birthday has taken on a different meaning since that important transition.
Like my 2005 birthday, I did indulge in some alcohol. Back then it was beer and cranberry vodka shots (Not a good idea…I repeat a horrible freaking idea…don’t repeat my mistake…seriously, do not make this mistake…you’ll puke a lot) and tonight I enjoyed a new Chardonnay at one of my favorite places, Bar Vinedo. I made the adult decision to stop at reasonable point, made easier by the fact I’m completing the Fighter Diet and have a horrible ability to tolerate alcohol right now.
I like to keep my birthday festivities to quiet small gatherings. My daughter changed my plans further today when she asked (last night to her dad) about hanging out with me for the day in lieu of attending school. How do I say no to such a cute request?! I threw out plans I had today to enjoy being a hermit while she and my husband were in school, completing my lower body workout and cardio routine, reading from Mind Over Money: The Psychology of Money and How to Use It Better, and taking a nap. Yes, I had great ambitions as an adult for birthday indulgences!!!
I still kept to my Fighter Diet workout routine, mostly because I wanted to not feel guilty about indulging for dinner (dessert was not planned at all!). I like working out. Do I always want to work out? No. However, it is great seeing the progress I’ve made and I know I’ll continue to make progress with mostly healthy eating habits and sticking to a solid workout routine.
Instead of hanging out with my fellow Marines in the barracks drinking horrible drink concoctions, my husband, daughter and I went out to dinner after I spent the day in my daughter’s company doing kid friendly things (splitting lunch and a cookies and cream monsoon, hanging out at the playground, and completing homemade craft projects).
Cookies and cream monsoon with coffee from the Agritopia Coffee Shop.
I am very grateful I took today off from work. My birthday is one of those days I quite enjoy a quiet respite from my typical hectic pace. This year, I enjoyed it even more since I stayed up late watching an few episodes of Gilmore Girlswith my family and additionally, my daughter camped out on the couch with me depriving me of a full night’s sleep.
My day ended with a fabulous grilled cheese and prosciutto sandwich, some of my favorite french fries, and this delicious dessert which I’ve been hesitant to order before because it has banana ice cream. Chocolate Mousse+pecan crust+chocolate ganache+ brûlée banana ice cream covered in salted caramel + chocolate drizzle on the side=How did I not order this item earlier? (Yes, my fear that it would be too banana flavored.)
Good night, everyone. I hope your day turned out as well as mine and when your birthday rolls around, it’s just as wonderful. I owe many thanks to everyone who loves me and wished me a happy birthday in text message, Facebook posts, voice mails, emails,and so on.
I have a great support system.
~Cheryl
Pecan Chocolate Torte ($7)….It’s better than birthday cake.
Good morning, everyone. I am fueling my day with a cup of Black Rifle Coffee Company’s CAF as we begin this Thursday morning. This coffee is pretty good; I . I know BRCC was in the news recently for their statement regarding hiring 10,000 veterans, sparked by Starbucks’ campaign to hire 10,000 refugees. (By the way, I am all for hiring both! I think any nation should work adamantly to reduce its unemployment numbers and if our nation is a landing place for refugees who are starting life over because they cannot go home or no longer have a home to go to and veterans seek a new occupation outside of public and military service, it’s ok to help both demographics.)
Life, as always, has been crazy busy. I’m killing it (or at least trying to) with the Fighter Diet Challenge and now that I’m in Week 5 I am starting to see more improvement. I am down 3 3/16″even without being 100% focused on the diet aspect of the routine. Seven more weeks to go so please expect more updates as I continue this journey.
Yesterday I agreed to participate in an upcoming engagement called She Went to War, being hosted at the Chandler Public Library on March 11th from 10 am to 12 pm. This event will be the first time I will be on a panel outside of Arizona State University and provides me with a unique chance to talk about my applied project, the role this blog has played in my life and sharing my experiences with family and friends, and learn from fellow panelists about different ways to open up conversations regarding military service.
For those who have followed my blog for awhile, you know February is tough since Feb. 2nd is the anniversary of Captain Brock’s death. Your patience when I take times from writing to breath and find quiet time in my life is greatly appreciated. Awhile back, I realized I inadvertently mentioned my father-in-law’s death and Captain Brock’s death occurring on the same day and I realized why. For me, I was in Iraq at the time and I was notified February 2nd. I can still recall sitting down at the computer in our recreation center and trying to comprehend this information and losing my composure completely when I went to my supervisor’s office to tell them I needed to go home.
I know if we were not married at the time, my unit likely would not have granted me the opportunity to leave to be there for my husband, his mother, and sister in their time of need. For all the ways the second deployment served as a disappointment in my life, my unit’s response to get me home is one of the best examples of leadership I found in the Corps. I was a mess trying to figure out what to do with my gear and rifle and they coordinated the logistics to expedite my homecoming. Below is the start of that journey home from OIF 5-7 (when I was serving at Camp Al Asad, Iraq).
I must leave you now to go to work but thank you as always for your viewership.
I’m short on time today so thanks for letting me stop by to check in and keep things simple. I am learning (again) how to restructure my time to meet changing commitments and my journey into Fighter Diet is something I would still like to bring into conversation for the duration of this challenge.
As I’m getting acclimated towards a hefty amount of meal prep (What was I thinking when I thought it would be less meal prep?) I notice I’m struggling to find time for everything. My reliance on already prepared (and mostly prepared) foods is changing as I see how much work it is to set up multiple meals for the week. The more I open my eyes the more I need to tweak my routine. I will say I miss some of the convenience of chow hall life now as I am no longer carefree to saunter in, grab food off a chow line, eat and then deposit my dishes for someone else to wash!!!
What a privilege that convenience was as a young adult.
Tomorrow signifies the end of the first two weeks and I’m no perfect person (hello junk food I’ve eaten along the way) but I find the workouts easier to stick with than the eating habits. Even in late elementary school, I liked running and because the weightlifting is helping me make huge strides in reducing my back pain I power through those no problem.
Right now I’m playing with trial and error a lot with one of my least favorite ingredients, the kale. I know it’s not a forever food item but I have plans to forego eating it for quite some time after this challenge concludes.
I am looking forward to getting back into Marine Corps shape (or hopefully, better) after undergoing this twelve week transformation. I am already eating healthier than I do on a regular basis and haven’t consumed a glass of wine or beer since Day 1. That’s a good start.
It would be nice to show everyone that you can leave the military and work on picking up a healthier lifestyle along the way, especially if you were like me and ate a lot of junk food as a service member. Looking back, I do wish I had cared to adopt healthier eating habits much earlier in life. Now, it takes some serious work and I’m stumbling along the way with all this meal prep.
With a full 40 hour week schedule plus almost 2 hours of commuting free time does not come easy. Additionally, I don’t sacrifice (much) on sleep. I’ve established a regular sleeping routine as it’s one of the key things that helps me more successfully manage my chest pains. I like going to be no later than 9:30-10:00 p.m. as best as possible and ideally I’d like to wake up at 6am but with my commute, I get up between 5:00 and 5:30 a.m. most days. For this challenge, I’ve tried waking up at 04:30 a.m. to help prepare breakfast and lunch before my day wakes for the day and it wasn’t conducive to my lifestyle.
Hence, biting the bullet and losing free time on my weekend. The end result is worth it. I ended up with 9 full size waffles and one kid-sized one, 2 dinner sides for Monday, dinner entrees Monday through Friday, and lunch sides (so long as my creations are edible) for two days. I put the kale in my slow cooker which is why I say “so long as my creations are edible” they count as lunch sides. I attempted to do a healthier version of collard greens but this one might be a failure. It’s hard to tell by smell alone with kale whether the end result will be good.
I think my favorite unexpected part of this weekend was learning you can use whey protein powder to make a latte. This item makes the plan easier to enjoy.
I can’t wait to enjoy the “extra time” I got back in my week thanks to prepping today. Have a great week ahead.
~Cheryl
Waffles for days!!!Chock full of Lily’s Dark Chocolate Chips.
She Wears Dogtags 