How I met My Honey - The story of Me and T

To put it simply....

I walked to the box.

I opened the box.

I shewed away the bees.

I looked down and said "Hello Honey"...




That will give you some idea of the humor with which T manages to touch my life every day...

Now, without delay, the story that started it all...

As soon as I saw this on Ramblings by Reba, I just had to do it. Like now. I wanted to do the (Breast)feeding and Birth Story poststravaganza hosted by Lotus over on Sarcastic Mom (they still aren't out of the question, I just have to sit down and compose the rest of them), but this one is a must. So much that I opened a new post and started it right away. Is it wrong that I *have to* with T, but that I am still putting off the ones about the kids? I'll link to those too...

So, anyhow...how many of you have wondered how T and I got together? I like the story a lot, myself.

When I was growing up, I heard my mom and dad's story countless times. They met and married in 2 months. I didn't come along until 2 years later, and I'm the oldest (there was another that mom lost, before me, but that was still more than a year after they met), so, no, it wasn't a shotgun wedding (though I don't know if my grandfather would have thought so). Mom always said she just KNEW when she first kissed him that first night that everything was different. She was 29, naive even then, and he was 25. He was a bit more worldly, a bit of a lush :-|, but his life got turned around just as much. The highlights for them---the talked every single day from the day they met. Two days after they met, my dad said "I'm falling in love with you" (I always imagine them cuddling---whether they actually were or not, I'll of course never know---but maybe she told me that once). Mom said "Fall slowly" (I'll always love that line.). 9 days after that---while mom was driving him to his parents' house, my dad said during the conversation "when we get married, blah blah blah." Mom said "we're getting married?" (or something of the sort---okay, this part is fuzzy to me, because it's not the funniest or most important part.) That was them getting engaged---she was surprised by the comment, he asked her---she tried to pull off the road to get a kiss, he thought she was so overcome that she was a bit dizzy and this pulling off the road thing wasn't intentional, and tried to steer the car back...but she let him know she just wanted a kiss. So then they got married---in June instead of August like they had originally planned. I think they figured why wait or something. Anyhow, that led to me and my sister.

As for me and T....my back story. I never had a boyfriend in high school---I don't know if you can really count the month I was "going" with the guy that I had a huge (stupid) crush on in high school, because that was more of a pity acceptance (I asked him out like a dozen times), and he broke up with me a month later. He and I tried to kiss once---in the front seat of his car up at the top of the hill mom and dad's house is at the bottom of, at night, in the moonlight---but it was a complete failure. The year and a half before I met T, I was working on getting in the military---first the Navy, then the Army, which I got into---and after I enlisted, had a small falling out with my mom, so I left for my grandparents' house on principle. While there I started going with my best guy friend, Josh, and was still dating him when I left for the Army. Marriage was discussed, we got really touchy feely (it was about time, really, there was a LOT of sexual tension those last couple years), but it wasn't meant to be.

I got through Basic after going to the Fitness Training Company for a few weeks, then I left for my AIT. Now, my original MOS was going to be Explosive Ordinance Disposal, but the guy who went to the interview with me chickened out, and since I figured if the guy could be a wimp and chicken out, then me declining (some of those pictures in the info-movie they showed us were pretty bad!) wouldn't look so bad. I remember another possibility when I enlisted, and asked about it when I had to choose my new MOS. That was Power Generator Equipment Repair.

Now, T's back story...He had a few girlfriends when he was in school, but once he got to high school, nothing serious. There was one girl, whose name we used for D's middle name, that was a friend of his. He liked her a lot. But he wasn't going to ask her out until he (a)knew how to kiss and (b)had a job that made good money. Needless to say, he never asked her out because he moved back in with his dad for his senior year, and the girl lived in the town his mom lives in. And he didn't really learn to kiss or get a good enough job before his step mom sorta helped encourage him to enlist (that's putting it lightly), so in October 1994 he went to his Basic training post. He's got double jointed shoulders (winged scapula), so he can't do push ups very well, but they pushed him right on through to AIT.

This is where the pushing stopped. He didn't make the cut with the push ups at AIT either, but they didn't let it slide this time. So, instead of getting a permanent duty assignment (well, he got one only he didn't get to go to it because he didn't pass the Physical Training Tests), he was kept there. AIT was in Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Maryland. He ended up being a holdover, meaning he was heldover after the time that his class graduated. He was being discharged because of the poor performance with the PT tests, and he did eventually get an appointment to have his shoulders looked at---but I'm getting ahead of myself.

A week after his class left, my class arrived. I was one of only two girls in my class. But I think we both could hold our own very well. We roomed togetherfor the first part of my time there. I think the guys in my class were actually pretty awesome. At least most of them were. I arrived at APG on July 14th, 1995, a Friday night. My class had to fill out some paperwork for the assignment. I think we did some of that on Saturday and there was some we finished on Monday. Some was done on Saturday in the company's main office, as I remember seeing T (very vaguely, but I know it was him) while we were working on our first round of paperwork. I know I had to have slept a lot on Saturday though because we had traveled all day Friday. I got there really really late at night---at the earliest 2am. I remember carrying my bags---and INSISTING UPON CARRYING my bags all the way from the company office to the barracks. The guy that walked me there---the soldier on CQ duty that morning (not T, though that would have been ironic now that I think of it) offered, but I wanted to show that I was a big tough girl. By the time we got to the edge of the parking lot across from the barracks, I decided to drag my garmet bag. But I had that duffel bag (the government issued one) and the one I had bought at the PX for all of my other stuff on my back.

There was also a period of filling out paperwork in the post's/brigade's rec hall. I remember that specifically because I know it was the day that I told my roommate that I had a really bad feeling about the platoon's drill sergant---a black guy that really wasn't a nice guy, and actually got deeply involved in some shinanghans going on around APG---only to turn and see him in the doorway of the room we were doing the paperwork in! I think it's important in regards to my relationship with T because I think overhearing that gave him a reason to have it out for me.

That Sunday, just 2 days after I got there (July 16th to be exact), was the first day I met T face to face. At the end of formation that Sunday evening, he came up to me. His first words to me were "Hi, you know you can wear your civilian glasses now." At that point I was of course wearing the government issued glasses---sometimes referred to as BCGs (Birth Control Glasses) or RCGs (Rape Control Glasses). From then on, it was a bit of a whirlwind. At first we were just friendly---everyone knew he had a thing for me. You could just tell. That Tuesday he asked me to go to lunch with him. Soon after was our first kiss---right where we could have been caught, and near to a spot that we'd often go later. It's amazing we never got caught there. He denies it, but I swear to you the first thing he said was "that's the first time I've ever been kissed by a real woman." I think we even had a lookout---there were a few people I know were against our relationship---not just the fraternization part, more than that I'm sure---but there were some people (even a former drill sergant---not our drill though) who were totally for us! I look back on it now and wonder---how come my roommate never diswaided me from this relationship? But then, I have to note she did something of a mock marriage ceremony for us. I wonder where she is---I don't even remember her name right now!!!

If you were wondering about my relationship with Josh back then---I broke up with him just before T and I officially decided to start seeing each other. It wasn't easy---he took it hard, but then there were a lot of things he was going through as well. He was going to college, and he had a chemical imbalance. He ended up meeting a woman online and marrying her---they were together for a few years before he found out she was cheating on him. He's since moved on (though I don't know if he's divorced his first wife yet, or if his new lady has divorced her husband finally), and he's with a woman he's very happy with.

Within a week of meeting T, we had fallen for each other. We started talking about sneaking away to have sex. I was a virgin. Needless to say, 2 months after my 19th birthday I no longer was.

In August we got engaged. Mid-September we made D. November we got married. There's really very little to describe in the midst there---there was sex, talking---lots and LOTS of talking, since we couldn't do much more unless we stole away. Of course, there was a lot of that too. In December we were both discharged---between my pregnancy and everything else, I ended up not being able to pass my PT tests, so I became a holdover too.

Our wedding was a super SIMPLE one. I look at Bridezillas and think --- those chics are just CRAZY. The guest list, the dress, the food, the music---none of it matters. All I wanted, all I've ever wanted, for both my wedding and my vow renewal, which we did back in 2005, is the man I married, and a few close friends and family. I wasn't able to have my parents there when I got married, but my dad was able to walk me down the "aisle" when we renewed our vows. I HAD to have it, especially that time, because my sister got married just 3 short weeks later. And I didn't want HER to have that before I did! :-| I'm the oldest after all, and I did get married first! For my wedding, we had all of 9 people there---the wedding party (me, T, my maid of honor, our best man and the post chaplain, as we got married on post) and 4 guests (10 if you count the baby in my belly. I just thought of that...I guess it's 10 now, since I have to count her at the renewal!). When we renewed our vows, there were 10 people---me, T, D, P, my dad, my sister, her husband, the pastor (at that time) of my home church, and my best friends from college, Christy and Nancy.

Something ironic---if they had discharged him in the time they are supposed to (2 weeks), then we wouldn't have been able to grow our relationship. We were together there at AIT for 5 months---he would have been gone after a week.

Things we also find interesting---he wanted to go EOD. He just barely had the scores for it. There are other things. Which is why our song is "Keeper of the Stars"---someone had to have a hand in it to get us together.

And from all this has come 2 beautiful babies, and a very strong 12 1/2 year marriage. I would never give back any of the trouble I got into if it meant losing all that I have now. It's not perfect by a long shot, but the 3 people it gave me are priceless. I'm still crazy for T (most of the time), and I look forward to the many happy years we talked about having together back 13 years ago. I find it a bit ironic that 13 years ago TODAY I didn't even know the guy---but by the end of the year I had met him and fallen in love with him and married him. I'd love to have had my parents at the wedding, but it was impossible for them to get out there at that time. At least I had dad at the renewal.

My birth stories: Or - More things than you really wanted to know about my reproductive health/history Part 2

Last time, when I wrote about having D, I ended talking about trials to come when it comes to the birth control I took after having her. I'm not going to regale you with the full 8 years worth, but taking that shot started me on an oddessy I'd much sooner forget now. And I'd really rather have all it's effects erased from my life as well.

When I was considering our birth control choices, I didn't see many options. I didn't find myself very good at taking medication, as there were lots of times I had forgotten some---chief among them, having just come off of a pregnancy, my prenatal vitamins. I had tried to breastfeed D, but after a short time (which I will elaborate on when I discuss my breastfeeding story), that came to an end. So, my few options seemed to be (a) winging it, and if I got pregnant again I did (which T would have preferred---I think he would have tried awfully hard to get me pregnant again quick so our kids could be just as close together as he and his brothers are), but that was out because after the ordeal I had to go through with having D---the sudden onset of labor (not really, because I just don't think I knew the signs. Not that there was a lot of obvious pain, just a tremendous amount of discomfort the day before), the tearing, the hematoma and resulting effects---(b) use condoms and hope we didn't get pregnant (why use condoms? We are a monogamous married couple.), (c) do the cross your fingers and hope thing, with some removal, (d) get something implanted or (e) get the shot. Well, the shot's every 3 months, there's little to no period, the nurse assured me (after repeated asking) that I'd be fine with little to no side effects, so I started on that.

Frankly, the nurse off, way off. Perhaps the 2 biggest effects right off were fatigue and an immense appetite. I always could eat a lot---but that can't be all of the reason for the weight I gained. I was making an attempt each day to do some exercise---walking with T to work, I was even still a member at the health club I went to before I joined the Army, which our first apartment happened to be across from. I'd go to aerobics classes, yoga, tai chi. Like I said, I did a lot of walking, with T, on my own, to the playground not to far from our house so D could play when she got older, pulling a wagon full of clothes up to the laundromat up the street from us. I might not have been a fanatic about it, but geesh! And my mom swears that in the time after I started taking Depo Provera and the year I took it, I ballooned. And you really can't say I never got my butt out and did stuff, because I HAD to walk to get where I was going most of the time---we didn't have a car, and the only time I really used my parents' car was to get to the doctor, either the gynecologist or D's pediatrician 30 miles away (the same city I had her in).

It didn't do the greatest for my head either. It's not documented since I wasn't going to any doctor other than the gynecologist---we didn't have insurance, and I was paying out of pocket for the shots---but I'm sure I suffered from some sort of depression at the time. I know my self esteem was in the gutter some---I can specifically remember one time T was trying to get frisky, and I went to wave my hand to get him off, and I popped him right in the nose. He got a nose bleed---but to feel so bad to discourage attention from your hubby, and then be insistent enough to end up batting him hard enough in the nose to make him bleed? Please people, I had to be depressed!

And the tricks not having your period plays on your mind! Not just during the 12 months I was on the thing, but for the majority of the next 8 years! I had started to wonder if I was EVER going to be able to have another kid. I guess the withdrawal method just works that good for us :-S But, I never had a period. Starting about 2003, after I went to Weight Watchers the first time, I sorta had one. Here and there, so much so I really got to calling it a "when it wants to" not a "monthly." Because it was NOT coming every month. For a few years before my first Weight Watchers attempt, it wasn't even coming once a year! I wondered if I had Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. I got tested for that once T got in the union and we had insurance. The numbers came back normal. I don't have a thyroid problem, those always come back normal. No blood sugar imbalance---even with a family history of diabetes (my YOUNGER sister already has it for heaven's sakes!), my blood sugar comes back normal every time. My cholesterol even! I'm just fat. Because of that damn shot!

I can't really tell you how bad I felt during that time. I've got journals, but frankly they're in our storage upstairs and I'd really rather not revisit that time that indepth. It was crazy. I know there were times I FELT CRAZY. And even with my questions and having to go through what I had to to have D, there were times even just after I quit the Depo that I would go through babylust---wanting another baby so bad I could taste it!

Like I said, I didn't know if I could have another kid because of how spotty if at all my system was working. T and I discussed it, and I decided that we could start trying for another when I was 6 months away from graduating college. I figured, it would probably take FOREVER if at all for anything to happen. I figured, I was probably infertile at this point---I mean, you have to ovulate and bleed pretty frequently to be fertile, right? Those are the SIGNS, right?

But the gods were smiling down on us. Things were in store for me that I'd doubted could ever be. Boy, did I get a surprise.

TO BE CONTINUED...

My birth stories: Or - More things than you really wanted to know about my reproductive health/history Part 1

Well, as you will find out by reading my How I Met My Honey post, I was a mama for the first time really young (19). Since the day I started having my period, I was like clockwork---every 29 days.

About 2 weeks after T and I got engaged, we snuck off post and had a rather interesting intoxicated (yes, I was 19, I only really had a buzz---dude, don't tell my mom, she doesn't know all this, okay? T was SLOSHED) liason at a friend's daughter's apartment. It was just me and him in the bedroom, I know that for sure. Heh...anyhow...I think back to that time now, and wonder how some things got so crazy. There are a lot of things I don't even think about now. This is probably the hardest I've thought about that night in a long time.

So, anyhow, because I was so regular, I actually knew going into that weekend that I was ovulating. I just didn't tell T until after we had our fun (and, frankly, got in trouble for it too! #2 of my Article 15s. Because of sneaking away, not because of getting pregnant). That was the weekend of September 15 & 16th, 1995.

2 weeks later, I took a HPT, and sure enough...I made a sick call appointment, and told my mom by phone on October 3rd, while she was watching the verdict to the OJ Simpson trial (no kidding), that I thought I might be pregnant. She remembers it vividly, in part because she remembers not being able to catch the verdict while I was telling her. She suddenly had much more important things on her mind.

When I told T he was definitely going to be a daddy, you couldn't keep the smile off his face! Our drill sergant (you need to read my post on how I met T to understand that jerk some) told me once if T didn't live up to his responsibility as a daddy, to really let him have it. I knew deep in my heart that T was going to be a great daddy, and I knew that he was going to prove that drunken-fraternizing-jackbutt wrong! And he has :-D

A month and a half later, T and I were married. It was a VERY small ceremony---there were 9 people there TOTAL, and that included everyone in the wedding party. No big deal---later, in 2005 when we renewed our vows, there was actually just one more person attending. Then, another month later, we were discharged. I came here, to live with my parents because it was my Home of Record, and he went out to Colorado for the same reason, so he could try to find a job and make a home for us. He didn't keep any one job for long---he got one of the worst jobs for him, telemarketing---he's not a big talker on the phone unless he really knows you. Like his mom or his friends or me.

He wasn't able to find much of anything so on April 1st, 1996, my mom told him that if he doesn't find a job by the end of the month, he can come out here. You thought that she was going to have us divorce or something, didn't ya? No, that was his mom's suggestion a month later---I don't think she remembers, but my mom will never forget it. Mid May, he came out here on a Greyhound bus, we met him at the old terminal in Erie, PA.

From then until the day before I had D, he looked for jobs, going with my dad to just about every place he could, putting applications in. He ended up getting the job he's got now---he went in for orientation the day before I had D, and was to start that next morning.

I was determined to go without any meds or anything when I had our son---we were thinking that, because most of the men in his family had made only or mainly boys, our kids were going to all be boys. We only had a boy's name picked out, though we went over girl's names too.

The morning of June 11th, 1996---my mom's 51st birthday---at 2:30am, I felt a pain I hadn't felt for 9 months up until then. I got up and said something to my mom about it (we were living with them still, and the bedrooms were right next to each other). She said to walk around a bit, and see if it made it any better. I was actually 5 days overdue at this point, so I was happy at the idea I might finally be getting done with this. I walked around a little up on the landing, and it felt a bit better, but 45 minutes later I started hurting again. And from then until 6:36am, just 4 hours after I felt the first real pain of my labor, it didn't stop. My contractions were so close together, we couldn't time them. I was in agony. There are pictures. And it didn't stop there---my parents' house was 20+ miles away from the hospital I had decided I'd have this baby at---the one that I was born in, as well as my mom and my sister. Once it was determined that we should rush to the hospital---by my mom calling the doc and telling them that they were so close together we couldn't time them---off we went. Gees, it's a good thing gas didn't cost an arm and a leg, because after he dropped us off, dad headed back to get my sister. Dad had to take the BUMPIEST route to the hospital---down a street that had lots of factories, so lots of railroad tracks :-( I just recently told him, in the last few years probably while we were driving out to see my mom while she was still down in Ohio, that I could have killed him that night.

When I was examined, it turns out I was 9 cm. When my mom found that out, she was surprised because she realized I could have had D in the car. We got to the hospital at 4 something. Mom waited out in the lobby because she didn't want to see me going through all that pain, so it was me and T and the docs coming in and out. I was wreathing in pain, it was so bad. It turns out there was some lady who had lost a multiple pregnancy, and the nurses asked T to tell me to quiet down. It wasn't easy, but I did some. But man was I in pain. I wanted drugs then---but I couldn't have them because I was so far along. The only thing that made me feel better was him stroking my sternum, and focusing on a specific spot on his tshirt. He was wearing a band shirt for Metallica, for their song "Unforgiven." I focused on the stamp the character on the shirt was holding in his right hand.

Finally it came time to push---my body told me it was time. The doc wanted me to slow down a bit, but I ended up just pushing thru---and ended up tearing some because her head didn't quite go through the birth canal as it was supposed to. That got sewn up, but it wasn't the end of my troubles---they had just begun.

I said before that with D, we had only picked out a boy's name, but we had kicked around girl's names. Imagine our surprise when the doc took her out and put her on my belly, and we discovered "he" was a "she". We sorta looked at each other and (unlike my mom's exaggeration, where we didn't know what to do), conferred with each other, using names we had talked about and liked---a name I liked that I had picked out when I was 14 and had a friend who said she was pregnant, but only the first name and not the whole name I had back then (it was 4 names long, but the reasoning still holds true), and the name of the girl he had liked in his junior year, who was his friend but that he had never asked out (again, something you'll have to read Our Story to understand). So she became DD. :-D

I went to recovery, and then to my room. I breastfed D some, off and on---there are pictures of me doing so. I didn't take her to breast as fast as I did P, but at the hospital I had P, they had a practice of leaving the baby with the mom and dad for an hour, for bonding purposes. But I still tried.

By 8am, 9, I had started to have some real discomfort, and when I felt down there :-S, I could tell something was wrong. A nurse brought her to my room, but I felt so bad and also was so worried about what was going on, that I couldn't do anything with my baby, I didn't even want to touch her :-( I told the nurse something was wrong, and she checked. I had a hematoma---a collection of blood, in the area of the tear. I was rushed to an operating room, and it was drained and taken care of. I wasn't given blood, though the doc later told my mom that he had thought about it.

Other than that, the next 2 days of my stay were relatively uneventful. I have fond memories of holding her and singing to her. I just couldn't keep my hands off my baby. I also seem remember being able to room in with her, but I could be mistaken. The only thing is I had no bowel movements before I left---something rather extraordinary. I've ALWAYS been regular with that, but I guess the prevalance of people not being so regular (like, everyday, at least once a day) isn't the "norm" any more. So even without the bm, they let me go. Which wasn't a good thing.

2 days after I left the hospital, I was back in the emergency room. With a clogged bit of plumbing (I'm trying to put it nicely for you). And an infection. During this 2 day stay is when the doc told my mom that he had thought about the blood transfusion during the draining, but had decided against it. That pissed her off. Why we didn't decide to stop going there right then and there is beyond me, because we were both going to that office then. It might be because the doc that had delivered me when I was born was the other doc in the office. Either way, things didn't get better. Oh, everything was basically okay with me after coming home after getting all those strong antibiotics for the infection---it burned some, and they were so strong I couldn't even pump for D. :-( My mom had to give her formula, which it's great there was a larger sample can in the stuff that came home with us.

No, there's another issue I have with the office, that has little to do with my first pregnancy. In fact, it's in the prevention of another. I didn't want to take pills, because at that time I believed that I was so bad about it I'd probably forget and get pregnant again. The first time was such hell that I didn't want to relive it any time soon. So I did a little (and I do mean LITTLE---we didn't have the internet as prevalently back then) research, and decided that Depo Provera would be my best bet. No way....

To Be Continued