YUCK!!!

so we have some workers from housing over here right now. we have mold in the ceiling in the living room. yuck!!! i had noticed what i thought was mildew or something on the ceiling so i had ben check it out and clean it up. as he was wiping it up with a cloth, he put a hole in the ceiling. lovely right?! so then it started dripping, and we've had water dripping onto the floor. thank goodness we don't have carpet. plus it was starting to stink. we've been so busy the past few days that we haven't had time to call and have them come look at it. but we got home from the dr today and it smelled so bad that i made ben call. the workers were here within half an hour. now we have a hole cut in the ceiling and are waiting for someone else to come over. the air conditioning repair guy or something. they couldn't see it leaking anywhere so we're not sure what's going on. who knows. hopefully they get it fixed soon though.

He Leaves...

...Monday. Yup, it's less than a week away. He got the final go ahead from his surgeon today. Do I need bother saying I cried when I heard that? Yeah I knew it was coming, but that doesn't make it any easier. Heck I would cry when he would leave to go work at the airport in Victorville for a couple weeks while we were at Irwin. The only difference there was I could drive an hour and a half and go visit him whenever I wanted. So being apart really isn't anything new for us. It's just never been this far apart. Anyway the next few days are going to be busy with getting things packed and ready to go. I'm doing my best to stay strong. As long as you don't ask me how I'm doing, I'm ok. Once you ask that, the tears start coming. We'll be ok though. This is all supposed to happen this way for a reason. Once I figure out what that reason is, I'll let ya know.

good news, bad news

i mentioned in a previous blog that ben has had numbness in his right arm since his surgery in june. we were able to get in and see the neurologist at yokosuka (the naval base about an hour from here) to see if we could find out what is going on. what it looks like is due to the position he was in during the surgery, the nerves just got pinched or aggravated or both. the good news is that the numbness should go away in 3-6 months. the dr gave him some exercises/stretches to do that should help. so you're probably wondering, "what's the bad news?" the bad news is there's no reason for him not to deploy with his unit next week. it's looking like a week from today he will be on his way to kuwait. we go see his ortho surgeon tomorrow, and he has the final say in if he's ready or not to go, but he should be ready. ben's able to use his shoulder for weight and stuff. we went bowling friday and other than some tightness from the muscles not being used much he had no problem throwing a 16 lb ball down the lane. anyway, as much as i hate it, it's starting to sink in that my hubby is leaving. i'll admit i'm not ready. it's a lot sooner than i was planning on him going. i knew it was going to happen, i just didn't think it was going to be this soon. 12 months seems like such a long time. granted he'll be home for r&r in 6 months, but still. and we've been apart before. the only difference is i won't be able to drive down the road for a quick visit now. but i'll let ya know what the dr says for sure tomorrow. i have a feeling it's not gonna be what i want to hear though.

caught in the rain

we've had a lot of rainstorms/thunderstorms lately that seem to come unexpectedly. today was no different. i was walking home from my dentist appointment this morning and got caught in the rain. it litterally took 30 seconds before i was soaked. lucky for me my neighbor happened to drive by and gave me a ride the rest of the way home. this isn't the first time we've been caught outside either. ben got home from work early one day last week and we decided we were going to try to hurry and mow the lawn before the rain started. he had just finished the back yard (and our back yard isn't very big) before it started to pour. i took these pictures last week, but just to kinda give ya an idea of what i mean when i say rain...

so maybe "raining" is not the right word... how about "flooding" anyone?!

3 Days, 3 Appointments

I'm not a big fan of the dentist. Never really have been. And Ben's been after me for a while to call and set up an appointment to just to just go in for a routine checkup/cleaning. I'll admit, it's been about 2 years since the last time I saw a dentist. That's how much I dislike it. And it didn't help that while we were at Irwin I had to go off post for the dentist. Here I can go to the clinic on post. Anyway, I finally gave into my husband and called Thursday to set up my appointment. Lo and behold they had an opening for the next day. So I go in Friday and it ends up just being filling out some paper work, doing some xrays, and the dentist taking a look at my teeth. So nothing serious. They don't do the cleaning or anything Friday though. I have to set up another appointment for that. We talk for a little bit, he gives me a slip of paper saying I need to set up these other appointments (I needed to get an old filling replaced too), and I head up to the front desk. Apparently things are pretty slow at the dental clinic because the receptionist was like "how about 730 Monday morning?" So I accepted that one, only to have to go change it later. Ben had failed to tell me about a pre-deployment briefing that I was supposed to go to with him Monday morning. So while out running other errands Friday afternoon, I stopped back in and changed it. Guess what, they had an opening for Monday afternoon instead. Come Monday I was back in the chair, this time getting my teeth cleaned. Still not my favorite thing, but I survived. After that was over, I received another slip of paper saying I need to schedule another appointment to get my filling replaced. I bet you can't guess when that one was set up for! Again I made my way down to the dental clinic this morning. I'm sure they are getting tired of seeing me by now. I know I'm getting tired of seeing them. Pretty much as soon as I walked in the door and checked in they were ready for me. They didn't waste any time getting me back there. It would have been nice to have a minute to catch my breath since we still don't have a car and I had to walk down, but it was all good. I was able to do that while they got everything set up. My dentist is a nice guy. He's a bit older and has been doing his job for a while. Doesn't mean that I like what he does though. But he does do it well. He didn't waste anytime getting me numbed up. I can't remember what he used, but it's a newer anesthetic. It works great! Granted he could have used a little more. He said he only used about half a dose, so I still felt some of the drilling, but nothing too terrible. The whole process didn't take too long, and afterwards they did another xray. This time they did the panoramic one to see how my wisdom teeth look. They had to do it twice because the gal who was doing it for me didn't have something set quite right or something so the xray machine got caught on my lead vest. So they fixed everything and did it again. It worked that time. The dentist was in with another patient at the time so I had a seat in the waiting room while he finished up. He came out a short time later and we went over the xray. Guess what, I get to go back to the dentist to get my wisdom teeth out. It won't be here though. I'll have to go down to the air force hospital where Ben had his surgery to see the oral surgeon there. So I'm not sure when that will happen. My dentist here is going to look into it and give me a call. We don't know how the whole referral process works, if he sets it up or if I do. We're going to push to get it done before Ben deploys though. And since we don't know exactly when that will be, the sooner I can get it done the better. I'll keep you updated on that though. I'm looking forward to my husband taking care of me for a little bit the way that I've been taking care of him for the past little while. It will be a nice change. =)
Speaking of taking care of my husband... He's hanging in there. The smallpox vaccine has just wiped him out. He was saying that it hit him a lot harder than a lot of the guys at work. It's starting to get better though. Slower than he would like, but still better nonetheless. His shoulder is getting better too. I can't remember if I mentioned it before, but for about the past month and a half or so he's had problems with his arm going numb. He talked to the dr about it last time we were there and Ben got a referral to go see the neurologist. He got that appointment set up today, and we head to the Naval hospital Monday. There we'll see if we can figure out why his arm and hand have been going numb. It's possible it could have happened during the shoulder surgery, but we don't know anything right now. So that's something else to keep everyone updated on. I guess that's one way to see Japan though. Having to travel everywhere for various dr appts. I won't complain too much though. It gives me a reason to get off post and out of the house, and to spend some time with my honey before he leaves for a while. Right now I'll take whatever time I can get. =)

i love technology!

i love how easy the internet makes it to keep in touch. i've been talking to my cousin kira over the past few days. and even though we're on opposite sides of the world, i love how easy and fast we can talk. it wasn't that long ago when all we had was snail mail. now i can sit and talk to my brothers or grandpa through instant messaging almost like we were sitting across from each other. granted it takes a little longer since we have to type everything, but you get the idea. i think i would go crazy if i had to sit and wait for a letter in the mail, especially being in japan. it takes longer for everything to get here anyway. so to be able to type it out, click send, and have it there is a blessing. yay for technology!!!

poor guy

part of ben getting ready for deployment is the less fun part of getting all the shots/immunizations. over the past week, maybe two, i don't know how many times he has been stuck with a needle. he's had to get the japanese encephalitis, anthrax, and small pox that i know of. none of which are very fun. he had to get the anthrax one day and then small pox the next. i sure hope i never have to get either. his arms just hurt and all the side affects are just not fun. then on top of that he's been passing kidney stones again. he had his annual physical a couple weeks ago and they found blood and protein in his urine, so the tested it again a couple days later, did some xrays, and other blood work and couldn't find anything. then like a day or two later he passed a stone. he took it into the dr and was like "see!" needless to say the dr apologized for not really looking at his medical records before. so they sent that stone off to have it tested (yes he kept it and took it in with him) and he's going to have a ct scan done next week. i wish we knew what was causing them. he's passed more since then too. i feel so bad because there is nothing i can do about it. hopefully we get some answers soon.