Two, and three.

This paper came from my time at AHPCRC this summer.

I don't know why I didn't think of this sooner but drawing with the kids is all kinds of cool.

To say that we live just doesn’t seem right.  I eat I move. I drink.  I even sleep. But… it doesn’t feel right.  753 days ago I woke up in the garden alone and covered in dew laying on a path of bricks. 671 days ago I saw the first other person I had ever seen among the perfectly manicured hedges. 623 days ago I talked to her. 543 days ago she talked back. 217 days ago we met someone else. 30 days ago I watched them both die. Yesterday I found a weapon. There are things I’ve learned about this place; where to find food, where to drink, where to sleep out of the rain.  There are things I’ve feared, starving, loneliness, dying in a spurt of too bright blood.  There are things I’ve fled from.  I don’t know if they can be killed but I guess from a logical point I don’t know yet if I can be. Today I’m going to find out. I crouched among the bushes at the end of the lane.  The garden here was less shrubs and more l...

I still haven't been in the mood to write, but I am quite pleased with my container garden this year. Pictures ... Miniorc's tomato plant. Four baby tomatoes so far. Orclette's strawberry plant. She's actually gotten quite a few and has enjoyed being able to pick them, wash them off, and then eat the product of her labor. Overall view of our front porch. Damm thinks it looks messy, I think it's not messy enough. I'll eventually have a jungle of a garden when I have the time and space.

I haven't felt much like writing, journaling or even texting. I'm guessing this is another phase of numbness, another step along the grieving path. The grief is a part of me now, something I let out every once in a while so that it doesn't build up too much. I wrote something in my journal one day after going to church on Sunday. Church was hard during the singing. It's as if I'm staring at heaven, knowing Cayden is there and how good it is, and it uplifts and breaks my heart at the same time. I've been savoring this poignancy since it is one that does not overwhelm me and it is a source of hope. The Orclette asked me the other day why I was still sad, why I still had days where I struggled to function normally. I told her that it would never truly go away, but that she and Miniorc were sources of joy for me. It has to be a rough time to be a friend to someone, after they've lost someone. I'm fortunate (not really fortunate, of course, since I'...

For those of you not familiar with Joel Rubin's The Maker's Diet  it's a Creationist lifestyle that parallels the Primal/Paleo lifestyle (they both end up at similar ending points but are based on different premises). I've talked about it but never actually read his book (I think I skimmed it at one point). I'm still not through the whole thing-I read a chapter yesterday filled with terms I hadn't heard before and came out of it knowing only that phytates are bad. The rest of it went over my head. The book was written to illustrate Rubin's fight with Crohn's, which he very nearly died from and now has no symptoms of. He tried every diet out there, visited numerous legitimate doctors and also tried numerous quack ones. No one could permanently help him. Once he came across this Biblically-based one he jumped into it feet first and had an amazing transformation. He became convinced that many of our illnesses stem from our modern diet-something which many...

I mean, other than the emotional and physical weirdness that occurs and that is completely normal. What I didn't expect was to suddenly gain three pounds and then not be able to take it off. I'm currently nine pounds heavier than I was pre-Cayden. At this point if I expressed my angst most people would say not to worry about it, that I've been through a trauma and it just takes a while to go back to normal. I know this. It doesn't really help. For me, and I'm sure for countless others, getting back to normal, whatever that was for you, is a way of reasserting control in a situation that is out of your control. So it is hard to accept that yet another thing is not up to you, especially  when you've had eating disorders in the past like I have (which is another way of trying to assert control over something). I won't return to those habits-God pulled me out of that way of life for a reason-and fortunately I have a set pattern of how to lose weight to return ...

Have I shared the story of how I took the Miniorc to the ER for the worst diaper rash case in history? He had just been born. My mother and I were exhausted (Damm was in AIT) and perhaps not thinking entirely rationally. He had been uncomfortable, crying and not sleeping. When my mom changed his diaper she saw blood, so of course we were in full emergency mode. I had no idea who to call so we went to the ER, where we found out it was a diaper rash. While we were there, though, we got to experience the antics of someone completely drunk or high (not sure which) who was bursting through room doors all over the ER. I had gone to the bathroom so it was just my mom and her newborn grandson when he came through our door. I don't think she's viewed that ER in the same benevolent way again. Anyway, back to the present time. Damm has been having excruciating headaches. He described it as a 10 on that 1-10 scale (hah. Sorry love, I've been through labor, and they told me my pain co...

Did you know that Mary, mother of Jesus, personally takes care of the babies in heaven? The Orclette informed me of this fact a couple of weeks ago. It startled us at first-not being raised Catholic, we simply didn't talk or hear about Mary other than at Christmas-but then we agreed. Who knows? And her statement was beautiful, since she merely assumed that Jesus, who loves us, would want his own mama to take care of Cayden since we couldn't. She's come up with a few other tear-inducing observations as well, and also a song, which I had to ask her to stop singing. We had just visited his grave and I simply was not able to handle the refrain of "I love you Cayden". But it too was beautiful. And here we are, nearly one month afterwards. We are back in our routines and it has helped. The concerned looks and hugs from people have stopped, which is good, since now I'm not prepared to handle them. I veer wildly from joyful to depressed with little warning. I've...

As you may have surmised from the previous post our third child has preceded us to heaven. At our thirteen week appointment they couldn't find a heartbeat. They rushed me into the ultrasound room to take a closer look. It was one of the hardest things I've had to do, since I knew I was looking at my dead baby. Damm wasn't there; we hadn't had any inkling of anything being wrong so I thought it was just going to be a routine, in-and-out thing. It was a Tuesday. Friday we went into the hospital so they could induce me. I asked for another ultrasound, not because I thought they were wrong but because I knew I would have nightmares if I didn't make sure. Once again, no movement, no blood flow, no heartbeat. So they put the little pills in and we settled down to wait. Once the pain hit I asked for drugs because I didn't want to feel anything. For six hours Damm and I sat together, trying not to feel or think. Then my water broke and I did too. All the emotions I ha...

Caoilfhionn meant Fair.  Cayden meant Fighter.  But for the rest of my life Caoilfhionn Cayden will mean the sound the desert makes when it cries for you.  I didn’t get a chance to meet you.  I didn’t get a moment to greet you.  I never held you in my arms.  I miss you though I never knew you.  I weep though I never heard you.  God, take my child with you.  Raise my child like I never got to.  Teach my child like I wanted to.  Love my child like I do. Caoilfhionn Cayden Wauson  Born in heaven but not on Earth.

This is intended to be a drawn out story told through the correspondence of a young soldier on the frontier.  The grammar is intentionally bad for a multitude of reasons.  One because I am not taking the time to check it.  Two because the soldier isn't supposed be well versed in letters.  Three because of One.  Hopefully unlike all my other projects this one will actually proceed and not end up unfinished. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear mum,                                                                     17 February 23 I arrived in Friendless yesterday evening.  there is not much here.  just a few streets and then the barracks.  I have been assigned to the third boat squad of A company and will be patrolling a...

And I'm not really creating it, just observing as my body does what it was created to do. We are out of the first trimester, into the second. I really, really need to go by the doc's office and get the drug testing done that they now require before my next appointment. I don't want any funny looks. And when did drug testing become a normal thing? And why do I have to go to a separate  office? This  is why you forego all doctor's appointments til you're eight months pregnant (like I did with Miniorc, although it wasn't by choice) and then they panic and only make you come to appointments. No blood testing, no wandering around the HUMONGOUS complex trying to find room numbers. Stupid heads. So some pregnant bloggers I read do this picture posting thing every week of how big they're getting. I won't be doing that. It weirds me out when people merely observe that I'm "showing" now. I still feel like they're somehow calling me fat or that ...

  me :  "The Obama administration has crafted a legal argument for the targeted killing of a U.S. citizen if an "informed, high-level official" decides he is a ranking member of al-Qaeda who poses "an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States,""   him :  Oooo, I like this But I think it doesn't cover the middle ground   me :  yeah what if I decide someone is a threat to my cookies?   him :  If the "informed, high-level official" only believes them to be "an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States" I think he should have the right to throw a black bag over his head, put him in the back of a van, and move him to an undisclosed location for questioning We wouldn't want to kill an innocent after all   me :  hrm... would he personally have the right or would it have to be done by another non-informed, lower-level person? Because the more people you tell the less secure you are   hi...

The book by Dorthy Cave regarding the Battling Bastards of Bataan. Debating buying this . Wanting to buy Warmachine or Warhammer. Not wanting to paint ANYTHING. And that is about it.

You know, my memories of being pregnant with both the Orclette and Miniorc are mercifully dim. I say mercifully, because I remember enough to know that if I well and truly remembered  the experience I would have had Damm snipped the moment the Orclette was born. I think it's that way with quite a few people, although I know a few who claim to love the experience. In case it's not clear, I don't love the journey. I understand the necessity and I'll bear whatever I need too but really, I love the end, when you finally get to meet the little person and life, which has sort of been on hold, goes forward again. We are almost out of the first trimester, and this experience has been different from the first two. With both the Orclette and Miniorc I was a bit tired, but nothing like the bone-crushing weariness I've had with this one. For several weeks I would make it home from work, stagger onto the couch, and lie there prone until I fell asleep an hour or two later. Now ...

It is the turning point of the battle of the bulge.  As we stand right now I think we are looking at what will eventually turn into a massive US victory.  The US only has about half of its total troops on the board and seems to have successfully obtained containment on their breakout. Bastogne held by virtue of the German player's attention being elsewhere.  Just long enough for the 4th armor to arrive and the 101st Airborne to come back and provide support.  In the center, just East of Manhay was where the greatest threat was felt.  Two turns ago the SS panzers had exploded out 20 miles past the US line.  Over the next two days the Germans would get caught up with fighting the troops of the 82nd Airborne and defending a city that wasn't really worth it.  As a result the US forces were able to come to support the Airborne troops who were slowing the panzers down.  And here we have an effectively sealed gap.  To the north US forces...

This semester I am ONLY taking 13 hours.  Which is a great relief.  But surprisingly enough the school load has expanded to fill any gap in work that I might have been experiencing. I am taking the following courses: Radar Leadership development Leadership development lab Capstone Undergraduate Research in Radar. Due to my participation in an organization that takes a lot of extra non-school-related time up I found myself with a two page paper due the first day of class and spent the three days before that working on organizational things 10 hours a day. I have a 10k word document that I have to finish editing and proofing very soon this next week, a project I have to oversee for some sophmores, a three page paper due Tuesday, 30 pages of the radar book left to read, and three papers that I have to read(average of 27 pages)[ Paper 1 , Paper 2 , and paper 3 is along the same lines.] None of this is terribly critical but it is a lot more reading than I'm used to by...

The following slides are from my Battle Analysis this semester.  The picture in the first slide is from the cover of the game " A Frozen Hell " and the black and white maps are modified from the book " The Winter War:  Russia’s Invasion of Finland, 1939-1940 "  by Robert Edwards.  The terrain map is also from the war game.  A great deal of the statistics are quotes from his book.  The only material that is mine is the analysis and the slide arrangement.  This paragraph is only to explain up front which material is mine and which isn't.  "Irg" pretty much was the same as National Guard or Militia Units.  They had almost no combat experience before this war and were drawn up only as Finland slowly realized how screwed they were.  The Russian advance seemed at this point to be completely unstoppable.  There was simply too many men, too little supplies and no fortifications to stop them.  This is NASTY terrai...

 So if you haven't been able to tell I've been posting over the past week/weekend about war games I played over the past year.  This was the second TCS game that me and Wulfa's dad played and I have here two photos from the two games we played.  Unlike Bloody Ridge(48 hrs), and Korellia(10 hours) this game is massive.  Absolutely massive.  I felt like we clocked around 120 hours each time we played it. Just like Bloody Ridge this game requires you to write orders and abide by them.  And like bloody ridge one side is very good at implementing(the Finns) and the other sucks at it(the Russians). In both games I played the Russians.  In the first one(seen above) I absolutely dominated.  Unfortunately this was because I was reading the rules exactly as written and was abusing a key watch tower to use my artillery to demolish the Finns. The second game, seen below went a lot slower as we(after a short chat with the designers) adjusted that rule ...

Over winter break it snowed.  Which is a pretty rare thing around here. The munchkins wanted to play in it so during the night they placed plastic buckets outside to try and capture enough for playing snowball fights. It worked out pretty well for them and resulted in about an hours worth of outside snow fun before the cold and wet got to them and forced a retreat inside for coco and cartoons.

This is a picture of the much more complicated Tactial Combat Series(TCS) game system from multi-man publishing.  This is the smallest TCS map and resulted in a game that took approximately 48 hours worth of game play(split up into about 8 six hour sessions). In this game system you have to write orders in advance and then roll to see if you can implement them and your tactical moves have to follow and abide by your strategical written and implemented orders.  Which leads to the occasional fits of frustration when your opponent has done something clever and you keep failing the implementation to counter it and he is free to exploit the hell outa you. In this particular game the Japanese Player(yellow tokens) must be aggressive and plan way way in advance.  If you do not attack from as many angles as possible as the Japanese(they start on the far left of the picture) you will find yourself where the player in the picture is....with far too few troops to take the rid...

I got this game for my birthday/Christmas present from the in-laws.  We played it two times over Christmas and a third time over new years.  In terms of game play each game seems to run about 30-40 min a turn with a full game on average lasting 14 turns. "On Average" is easily calculated thanks to the type of game that this is.  You see unlike every other war game I've played with Wulfa's dad this one has a variable number of turns.  To the right bottom you see a small box with numbers and a marker.  This represents Stalin's patience.  Each game turn the Russian player rolls 1d6 and on a 3 or lower Stalin loses one point of patience.  At zero patience the game is over and you count victory points(The red hexes). Without that randomness this game is a walk for the Russian player... you just meander forwards slowly and your troops out number and overwhelm the Finnish(who the entire game will have meager resources and be running around sniping at t...

The weather is bleak wintry fog soup with a side of nasty.  US air is grounded and no one is expecting any movement.  Then the guns begin drumming from across the river and suddenly nightmare weather gives way to nightmarish numbers of German troops on a counterattack. The US forces near the Our River just a day's march north east of Bastogne are overwhelmed as 8 infantry divisions and 5 armored divisions come pouring across the river. Four brigades of artillery are dissected like dead frogs due to lack of infantry screens and the middle of the front collapses.  The 106th is quickly pushed to the river and only about half its strength makes it across.  The 14th Cav brigade that was acting as advance scouts is lost, presumed dead. To the north near Eisenborn and Kalterharberg the 99th and 2nd infantry divisions begin a careful retreat hoping to hold on until the 5th and 7th Armor Divisions and 1st ID can arrive. ...

What I should be doing right now: Rewriting/building my engineering capstone project's code from the ground up in order to make it more organized and clean. What I'd rather be doing right now: Cheerfully finishing up the last pages of an amazing novel that I just wrote*. What I am doing: Writing a blog post. Saturday went splendidly in the manner that I overslept, but still went to work.  When I got to work I became very grouchy for being at work and not getting work done fast enough.  Then I came home to my house where everything is dirty. So now I'm in the garage trying my best to ignore Matilda from the living room and trying not to be a complete #($* about how much I don't like this house or the stuff in it or my weekly schedule(lack there of). I tried to look back at the early portions of this blog to see if I had always been as downer as I have been recently and I can't really tell because this blog was originally a game based blog it is really...

At some point last year I stopped writing.  I was so caught up in my depression over finances, school and the future that I just stopped doing things.  I cut my reading down to nearly nothing and wasted a huge amount of time with tv and internet and saw my grades suffer, my house suffer, my kids suffer and generally all my output drop to negligible levels. That isn’t to say I failed at everything but 2012 was definitively not a banner year for me.  And then to end it I started this winter break with turning 31 and feeling that I had done NOTHING with my life so far and how sucky I must be to be THIS OLD and not have a clue what I was doing. I mean everyone else at this point has their masters, their own house, and perfect kids right? HAhahha. So I shouldn’t have stopped writing.  Even with it not being my strongest point it gives me a chance to do something that doesn’t involve math and isn’t an assignment but is at least slightly productive.  It is ...