Ranger On

Hi Friends!

How are y'all hanging in there?
For those of us with guys in class 11-12, we've only got 23 days until the first graduation week pass! Yeah!!!

Sorry to be so absent lately, but we've had one hellofa week.  In short, my dad-in-law had a medical emergency, in fact, his heart completely stopped, and we had some tough choices to make in regards to Ranger School.  I'm not usually keen on divulging personal details like this, but if my mother-in-law herself wasn't a retired Army Captain with an older son just out of the military, I'm not sure that I would have had any clue what to do.  

In the midst of all this, I've had some time on my hands.
This is a card I drew for my hubby/superhero; our last name begins with S.

For the record, my dad-in-law made it through and is making a remarkably great recovery, but when M's mother called last week, she shocked me with the news that his dad was in critical condition and wasn't expected to make it through the night.  His heart had actually stopped beating several hours earlier, and it took them an hour and a half to find a pulse and bring him back (!!!) but she waited to call and potentially pull M out of Ranger School until every doctor and nurse there confirmed that his sons needed to come NOW.

At a previous FRG event, a senior spouse mentioned that she asks her husband some critical questions before every deployment, like if anyone is sick, do you want to know?  If anyone is dying do you want to know?  Will you want to leave?  As impossible as it might be to answer that, it's good to ask, apparently.  I wish we had discussed it earlier, but I simply couldn't keep that information from him. 

So in case of any situation like this that may require emergency leave 
(when your soldier's deployed or otherwise off the grid, like in Ranger School) 
contact the American Red Cross:
(877) 272-7337
http://www.redcross.org/find-help/military-families/emergency-communication-services

Be sure to have the Hospital name & phone number, and ask family to give the nurses permission to release information to the Red Cross.  The Red Cross representatives were beyond helpful, kind, and compassionate.  I cannot thank them enough!  

In my case, I thought I knew my husband better than anyone until they asked questions like if he may need cadre support or to receive the message from a chaplain since it would come as a shock...to which I had to answer, maybe cadre support, but in that state of sleep deprivation he might punch the chaplain...

To make a long story short, M decided to stay in Ranger School (his Dad's wishes) and finish strong with the extra motivation. He asked that I go in his place and be there for his family, so I unpacked the bags I'd so hastily thrown together for both of us, threw together clothes for a wedding and a funeral, an AMAZING friend drove me to the Atlanta airport last minute, (Shannon, you're a lifesaver!!!) and I hopped the first plane I could get on back home.  

His dad shocked us all again by pulling through, then coming off the breathing machines  (please excuse my medical ineptitude) in a matter of days rather than weeks, and then getting up and walking about in less than a week!  He's not much of a fan of hospitals...or rehabilitation facilities (I would want to get the hell out of there too) and today I actually visited him at home!  Walking around! Climbing stairs!  You'd never know his heart's been there and back again a few times this week.  

M's been through the ringer dealing with all this while at Ranger School, especially the uncertainty of thinking his dad had passed for a whole day, but cadre has been really fantastic about allowing him to call intermittently for updates and even talk to his dad for about 15 minutes last night.  For those of you who saw my vague fb updates or heard the news, thanks so much for your thoughts and prayers!  I truly believe that made all the difference in his dad's recovery and M's peace of mind to Ranger on!  

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Themed Care Packages for Ranger School

Goooooood Wednesday morning, ladies and gents, it's a be-ee-ay-utiful day here in lovely Houston, where it's at 60 degrees with a high of 85. The trucks are revving and it's business as usual off of Beltway 8.

While it is still a while away, the [mental] deadline for sending care packages for the end of Mountain Phase is approaching (and none too swiftly, if ya feel me on this). I plan on mailing mine on the Saturday or Monday before the phase is done. A few things to consider before mailing, though.

1. Airborne: B. is airborne certified. If he passes Mountain Phase, and the weather for take-off/jumping is good enough, he's gonna be jumping his exhausted butt into Florida. While that man has a stomach of steel (seriously, food poisoning does not happen to him), I seriously doubt that jumping out of an ever-living plane with a stomach full of sugar is what he really needs. Projectile vomiting while projecting yourself out of a plane can't be good.
2. Time: Reports (::cough:: Facebook ::cough::) have brought back the info that he's only going to have 20-45 minutes to eat the food. So, while I would just love to send him 3 care packages with all of the stuff I want to send him, chances are he won't be able to gorge himself fast enough... Though, now that I think about it, 20 minutes is 4 times longer than he's had to eat for what, at that time, will be 6 weeks, and 45 minutes is 9 times longer than what he's had... so maybe he will have the time. Better to have too much in a care package than too little and have him licking the inside of the box... right? (Swear, that's what they do with the MRE packets... and instead of trading MRE's for flavor, they trade them for caloric content, the higher the better.)
3. Collective Sweets: The thing I need to keep remembering is that every single wife/girlfriend/mother will be sending cookies/candy/brownies.... While I want him to have his favorites, more than likely he'll be able to poach the sweets off of his squad mates. That's not to say that I didn't include some sweets in these "themed" care packages... Just something I am trying desperately to keep in mind. The stuff he misses the most is fruit because I suppose MRE's don't have that kind of stuff (got the same feedback at LDAC, too.)

Now, without further blather, the themed care packages!

Tex-Mex in a Box:

• Jar of chunky salsa
• Jar of queso 
• Tortilla chips
• A good alternative to tortilla chips are soft tortillas if you're concerned with the chips breaking into a million little pieces
• Fork/spoon 
• This is especially good if you send the chips. B. has poured the chip fragments into a salsa container with a little bit of salsa in it, and eaten it like soup. I can see him doing this again...
• Turkey jerky
• Fruit twists (I found some at my local HEB... review from a mom's blog can be found here)
• B. ate all of the ones I sent him in his Darby care package.... 18 of them. That's 18 servings of fruit. Well.... ok, he had 17. I had to try one. They're delicious.

Third Grade Lunch Box:

•  Loaf of bread
• you can put pieces of cardboard around it in the box so that it doesn't get smooshed... but, as B. always tells me, "It being smooshed doesn't affect the taste."
• Jar of peanut butter
• this is a stick-to-your-ribs staple. I swear, peanut butter is the only reason my picky-eater sister made it through childhood... well, that and pasta. Additionally, Rangers have frequently requested jars of peanut butter so they can dunk cookies in it... 
• "Oreos and peanut buttah." <--- Parent Trap anyone?
• Jar of jam
• B's not a big jam eater, but I think if I got a type with enough hunks of fruit in it, he'll be all over it. His favorite fruit is cherry and strawberry, so I'll probably pick something like that. Y'all feel free to go crazy on this one.
• Jar of marshmallow fluff
• can be swapped out for the jam. Peanut butter and Fluff sandwiches are apparently a favorite of kids everywhere... I wouldn't know, Mom didn't let us have sweets as our main course. (SO DEPRIVED, Y'ALL!)
• Jar of Nutella
• ditto the subpoint of the marshmallow fluff.
• Snack-size bags of chips
• I'd say these are good candidates for shipping just because of all that air in each bag. They can also be easily passed around so that all those men are putting their dirty paws into one community bag.
• Instant milk
• "EEEWWW, Courtney, that is nasty!!!!" Hold your horses, ma'am/sir. Aside from fruit, the thing that B always headed for first is the gallon of milk. Which always makes me mad because no matter what cup I have set out for him, that man drinks FROM THE JUG. Thank you, sweetheart. Anyway, the powdered milk, while not necessarily the BEST alternative, still has all of the healthy essentials needed in milk. You can get the powdered milk in mostly the same variations of the liquid stuff -- I haven't done a ton of in-store research on this, but it's something for you to look at. After all... what's a healthy third grade lunch without milk?
• I'm even considering putting a few tablespoons of chocolate milk mix into the powdered milk... so when B. mixes it with his water, he gets chocolate milk!!! He likes strawberry milk best, so if anyone reading this knows a powdered strawberry mix, please let me know in the comments. 
• Cookies
• need I explain even further? NO third grade lunch is complete without cookies.
• Wet Wipes
• sticky kid hands, dirty Ranger fingers, tomato, toe-mah-toe, right? These babies are like gold, especially if they're the kind with soothing aloe vera in them. 
• Plastic knives
• Something Rangers can get that third graders cannot -- CLEAN knives to spread the jam and peanut butter!

BBQ, Baby!

• Beef jerky
• I recently made a trip to Sam's Club... got a 1 pound bag of beef jerky. Can't remember how much it cost, but Sam's Club is the best.
• Summer Sausage
• You can sub this out for the beef jerky, but be sure to provide a knife for slicing
• Jar of pickles
• Seriously, what's BBQ without pickles?
• BBQ sauce 
• For dipping?
• on that thought, maybe provide some little canisters for them to pour it into so they don't have to pass the whole bottle around? I assume sharing on all of this stuff.
• Sweet tea mix
• You can pack the Mio tea squirty thing, the Crystal Light powder, or whatever, but I firmly, FIRMLY believe that sweet tea is a requirement for barbeque.
• Chips
• Cookies
• Fruit Twists
• Wet Wipes

Phew. Okay, all, I'm about done with typing. I've got a call with Canada that's going on right now, and I have a sneaking suspicion they're going to start asking me questions about my work (I know, right, the nerve of them to interrupt my blogging to ask me about WORK!). 

I hope to carry on the rest of my ideas in the next post. Feel free to add your ideas in the comments and I'll post them on my next posting!


Stay classy.

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Writing for Ranger School

The first thing B. told me was to cheer him up. He told me how much my letters meant to him at LDAC, and how happy they made him -- then, how terrified. See, when I didn't hear from him for a few weeks, I started flipping out. This was our first separation where we didn't talk, and I was convinced that something was wrong. Other woman replaced me, wild Manbearpig ate him, he decided that the whole "dating Courtney" thing wasn't for him... yeah, hello, I'm a drama queen.

And most embarrassing of all, I let it show in my letters. I can't remember specifics, but basically I wanted to know why he hadn't written. Then, I got all his letters within a span of three days, and they went from "I miss you" to "Are you not getting my letters?! I'm really worried by your tone!" Yeah. Worst girlfriend in the world >>right here<<.

So, I'll state the most overtly simple lesson: Keep it positive. Even the smallest negative can take your guy's head out of the game, and that is not what needs to happen in this stage of his training. He needs to know/think everything is just peaches and cream without him, and you're thriving. Don't lie, but don't take up a paragraph telling him about that douche of a maintenance man who was 4 hours late and tracked mud throughout your house.

Next: the elements. I read this on another blog, which I'll post at the end, but the men are not given weather forecasts. So when they're out there sleeping in their hooches, they wake up and are just as surprised by the weather as the cavemen were. SEND THEM THE WEATHER FORECAST! Because I have no idea when mail call is, I sent the 10 day forecast in my last letter. I'm planning on doing the 15 day forecast with each envelope I mail out, in the hopes that he'll get the most current one and get some use out of it.

 News: Again, send them the good stuff. Their presidential candidate is ahead in the polls, the stock market doing well, even the Sunday funnies if they're into that. B told me that I was his break from Army, his way of "checking out" and leaving work -- that's difficult enough to do via text message or over the phone, but to do it through letters? Very, very difficult.


And finally -- for you. Stay BUSY. I work 40 hours as an IT consultant, then I tutor ACT/SAT/English/Homework/Organizational skills for local kids who need it. Then I work out. Then I go home. There was one Friday last week where I wasn't busy -- worst day in a very, very long time. I went to my mother's house and moped around. Resist the urge to submerge yourself in everything regarding Ranger School. I watched "Surviving the Cut: Ranger School" on Netflix, and read through a Ranger's journal online within 24 hours. I was lost in it. Maintain your own life. Maintain your own life. Maintain your own life.


And, with a little luck and a little hope, those 62 days will not be lengthened by recycling, and they will fly by.

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