A while back, I read a blurb by a psychologist who discouraged people from spreading pictures of poppies and veteran support through social media because while it didn’t do anything to actually ‘support’ veterans, it did make veterans uncomfortable, forcing them to relive memories they would rather forget. I’ve had that rattling around in my head for a bit. I won’t argue with her, she works with many veterans and specializes in PTSD and OSI and many of those she sees feel the way she has stated.  She is obviously far more qualified than I am to make any statement about this. Let’s face it, your facebook sharing doesn’t actually support anyone, no matter what the cause.  Sharing 50 pictures of soldiers on one knee next to a cross will not actually support a single soldier needing help.  Not one.  Not any more than your pink ribbon pictures help anyone with Breast Cancer or your Giraffe profile picture is doing….. anything but offering amusement. Seriously, the eyes/door debate is being taken a liiiiitle too seriously by some of you…. Anyways, I see the point clearly that your yellow ribbon posts and ‘support our troops’ facebook stickers and ‘share if you love our soldiers’ sharing is not doing anything to help support our veterans who are lost, hurting or injured either physically or emotionally.  Donating to charities like Soldier On or the Wounded Warrior Project is a good start if that’s what you were trying to do. We can all admit that we know deep down that social media sharing does nothing, long run, in tangibly helping anyone.  So this, this is my opinion…

In 1999 the Internet was a strange thing I didn’t understand. Computers had only recently started to be required to type and submit assignments in high school when I graduated that year.  Though chat rooms existed, I hadn’t discovered them.  My little brother, 2.5 years younger than me, had a computer in his room and used it to ‘chat’ with his friends.  I had no idea how he was doing that.  My cellphone was still about the size of a brick.  When I started college that fall, I went in the week before like everyone else to pick up my schedule.  No online login required! This was the same year DH went to Basic Training.  I lived in a city with no regular force base.  My family was not military.  What I knew about it could be summed up in the reminiscing of my mother in law as she looked back on the years before my father in law retired. Also: MASH.  Everything I knew about the army could be summed up by MASH. Unfortunately, Dh is not American, it’s not the 1950’s and life isn’t like TV. I couldn’t ‘Google‘ to learn more.  Google was a Beta version of something before I knew was a Beta version was. I actually took a couple books from the library but they were all from the 1970s. So when I walked into the tattoo shop the week after Dh enlisted, all I had was a picture I had traced from a movie cover.  I was going to get it tattooed on my….ahem…. backside.  It was to be a gesture in love.  I wanted Dh’s last name inside. The picture looked…

When I called my Bamma, who was the mom of 11 children and grandmom to, well, a lot of grandchildren, to tell her she was now also a great grandmom to one little baby boy, she only had one question. “Were there no perfectly good little girl babies at the hospital you could have brought home instead?” It was no secret my Bamma liked to talk up her love of little girls and disdain for little boys, but at the time I didn’t really get what she was saying. The last time I had the opportunity to see my Bamma was weeks before she passed away. She met her great grandchild for the first time, and he took his first steps like he had been saving them just for her. She told me to trip him. She was a smart woman, my Bamma. I now have 2 little boys in my home, one who is 11 and one who is almost 6. Cute, aren’t they? But I have learned this about boys that I cannot un-know. 1. They pee.  On everything.  It starts young, the first diaper change you aren’t quite quick enough will get you wet real fast.  Never change a diaper with your mouth open.  And buy all the Peepee Teepee’s you want.  Babies move, friends.  You will end up in the line of fire. You think that’s bad but… 2.  Once potty training starts, it’s all downhill from there. Moms of boys, you cannot keep your reading material anywhere near the toilet.  No matter how pretty the basket, it will get wet. It’s all actually because… 3. Boys are easily…

Remember a while back when I wrote about strength? I wrote a little bit bitchy bitter piece about my problem with the ‘Strong is the New Skinny’ mentality. Not because I had a problem with strong, but because I had a problem with the definition of strong. I had a problem with it being defined by how we look and not what we accomplish. Well, last Saturday was my definition of strong. Last Saturday, 6 days after running the Army Half Marathon, I dropped one kid off across town, then drove 2 hours to my aunts house and dropped off the other 2, then drove 2.5 hours to a friend’s house to stay overnight so I could run my first Tough Mudder. I stayed up way too late talking to my friend because, well, the army moves you all over and then you see each other again but it’s 9pm and you have to race the next morning.  So you still stay up until midnight and get up at 5.  Whatever. After spending 15 minutes sneaking around the silent house trying not to bother anyone looking for a phone that I HAD PUT IN MY BRA, I headed out the door before 6 with an hour to kill having breakfast before I was scheduled to meet my teammates. Except my phone stopped connecting to the network and all I knew was my teammates were meeting me at a Tim Hortons in Barrie, Ontario. Friends, there are 10 Tim Hortons in Barrie, Ontario. Canadians really friggin like Tim Hortons. So after almost an hour of driving and now 5 minutes away from our Rendezvous time, I was on the side of the road, near tears thinking it was all over. Except my…

Today I have a fabulous guest writer who is sharing her story about how the Canadian Military helped her love take off!  Check out Hannah and learn more about her lovely husband and their story! In 2008, I was in my final year of university, newly single and very poor! It’s also the year that I met my husband, embarked on a long distance military fuelled relationship spanning England, Canada, Afghanistan and places in-between. If you had told me that at the time, I would have laughed. In your face. Very hard. Being rather the typical British student, my weekly budget was often limited to £10 ($15-20 CAD); it was unusual for me to choose to book a train ticket that set me back an entire £35. However, my friend in Leamington Spa was throwing a Halloween party, and needing a break from the already mounting pressure of my final research project, I jumped at the idea. Trains in the UK are fabulous, except on Sundays, where they are full and it is not uncommon to sit on the floor outside the washroom for 3 hours! Since Sunday would be my day of return, I splurged and bought first class tickets. I needed to write my research paper, didn’t cha know?! It would have been my first premier seating purchase but with free dinner included, how could I not do it? The stars must have aligned that day because the whole first class package cost me £27, I could not turn down such a deal! After a fabulous weekend in Leamington Spa, I found myself running at full speed to the train station because time keeping was not my strongest point. I finally made it, breathless and sweaty. I hopped on the train and went…

Yesterday was the Canada Army Run. I’ve never raced one before, I didn’t register in time after we moved to the area last year, so this year I registered as soon as I could to be sure I would have the chance. It’s 22 000 people who run and walk either 5km or 21km, inspired by the Canadian Army. And, well, I have a soft spot for the Canadian Army so I wanted to take part at least once. It’s very similar in set up and location to the Ottawa Race Weekend where I ran the half last May.  So I was feeling slightly less panicky than usual about the logistics of the race since I had a general idea of what to expect.  I have some family in Ottawa and my wonderful Auntie was letting the kids and I crash at her place and babysat them for me.  Not just once, but twice, since the opportunity came up at the last minute to meet a friend for coffee on the Saturday night after I arrived my aunt even put the kids to bed for me when I snuck out. I slunk back in the door around 10.  I already knew this was a very different race than I had run in May.  This was my 3rd Half Marathon race this year.  I was getting complacent from the runner who guarded her nutrition and went to bed at 9 last spring.  I also wasn’t out to race because, well, we went over that.  I just wanted to finish at a decent time and enjoy the experience.  And I didn’t want the race to stop other experiences, like the chance…

Some things just don’t work out the way you planned. Like when you wait until the very last minute to register for a half marathon and then a week later for you and your husband to do Tough Mudder so you are *certain* he will be home, and then not one but TWO countries militaries decide to change their plans just to screw you over. Okay, it might not have been meant personally. Apparently national defense plans are not all about me. Whatever. But Dh’s course that he was supposed to return from this week ended up starting this week and so races are upon me and I will be heading there alone while he lounges it up in Fort Benning. Sunday is my first race of the fall, I am running the half marathon at the Canadian Army Run in Ottawa. My longest run since I raced in the Ottawa Half-Marathon has been 16km.  My weekly average went from 45km to 25km.  Summer hit me like a ton of brinks and the crushing humidity on my poor prairie lungs, coupled with serious allergy issues that seem to have started just last summer (I am apparently allergic to Ontario) grounded me most of the summer. I felt like I was breathing underwater almost every run. And it was about the middle of August when I realized the 2 most important lessons of all of my excuses. 1. Running is all in my head. I am only as good a runner as I was my last run. If my run was hard, if I limped through a 5k that morning, than I am a terrible runner who has no right to even own a pair of running shoes. My head will tell me how…

I think I’m supposed to be sad today. I think so because facebook and Instagram and twitter tell me so.  They are filled with moms posting teary statuses about their babies, and back to school posts about longing and wishing to turn back time. I think I’m supposed to be sad because I kissed my kids goodbye today and after 11 years, they all went off to full time school and left me here, alone. We spent the weekend packing backpacks and making lists.  Trying to make a way to make ‘balanced nutrition breaks’ work with my eating phobic kids.  Talking about friends and teachers and bedtimes. This morning they were up well before 7, even though they don’t leave until almost 9.  Dressed in their very best, until they decided to draw with chalk on the driveway while they waited and ended up covered in coloured dust. I cared a little, even though my goal this year was to head for a mediocre start. Because we all know I’m not going to keep up some super planned routine of having it all together very long.  So I decided to just ditch all the keener bullshit and start the year the way I hope to finish – “meh”. That way the teachers are impressed when I get even the smallest things done, instead of disappointed when Monster shows up for the first time with 2 different shoes or Drama doesn’t have her lunch kit packed 3 days in a row.  And they are full of acceptance instead of frustration when Freckles forgets his entire backpack by month 2. But I mostly spent the last few days feeling bad about my…

The other day I was speaking with a stranger in some random context like I do (it’s like I treat the outside world like the Internet some days) and in the course of conversation, I mentioned that my kids had Mixed Martial Arts class 3 days a week, so sometimes I feel like a hockey mom but with fewer pre-dawn ice times and smaller bags to carry. And I got a response that I wasn’t expecting because I never really thought about it. She said: “Why would you teach your kids to fight?  Aren’t you just raising bullies?” And I wish that I could tell you I was eloquent and well spoken in my response to this douchy comment. But what I did was squinch my face up and say ‘Noooo!’ like a 14 year old girl if you ask her if she’s still into the Jonas Brothers. Normally, this kind of thing wouldn’t bug me.  I mean, why would MMA be any different than soccer or dance class.  It’s just a different sport, one of the many that parents who want their children to learn to be active have to choose from. And I wouldn’t say one is any better than the other.  It’s all about finding one your kids will enjoy and you will be comfortable taking them to.  If your kid is in dance or hockey or lacross or fencing, you’re teaching them not only a sport, but about life.  That’s how lessons work. Dh and I, we chose MMA. We lived in  small town in our last post, so there weren’t a…

Sometimes, as a community we just want to be heard. Every community does. We all look to be understood, right? So then we see things like and this and this and at first I thought it was funny and cute and I had a giggle until I realized that people were serious. Now don’t get me wrong, years ago when I first saw those ‘things not to ask a military wife’ I thought they were funny, tongue in cheek, cute ideas.  I even posted one on here once a few years ago. But friends, they’ve gotten out of hand. They were meant as a JOKE. And while I still think that asking my husband ‘have you ever killed someone?’ deserves whatever smart ass response he gives you about not yet today, we’ve really got to cut it out handing out a list of rules for people to follow if they want to talk to us. And I agree that obnoxious is someone telling you “I know exactly how you feel”, especially when they are talking about a deployment because of a business trip to Kansas. But we’re not talking about that.  We’re talking about real friends, acquaintances, and family members sharing their honest struggles about their spouses absence. Because we are constantly like ‘my civilian friends don’t help/understand/support me‘ with one breath, while we are busy telling them we don’t want to hear anything they have to say, or any struggles they may have, with the other. Friendships are a two way street.   Military spouses do not have the monopoly on missing their spouses. And here’s the absolute truth I miss my husband when…