Ok, so I totally stole this idea from a
blog friend. I thought it was a really fun post, and I'd like to take a trip down memory lane to reflect upon how I got to be here in my position, waiting on my hubby during deployment and a second semester nursing student. Perhaps I just need reassurance that I am not crazy. Except, I hear you have to be a little crazy to be a nurse. I also hear you have to be a little crazy to marry a Marine.
June 2009: I am not sure this month was really too memorable. I will still newly unemployed and just enjoying being home with Ben, and my puppies. My dogs were only about 3 months old here and driving me crazy with potty training.
July 2009: I finally got to spend the 4th of July with my hubby. We went to the beach with some friends, BBQ'd some burgers and headed home to pick up the dogs and walk down the hill to catch the fire works show.
August 2009: My sister turned 21, we took her to Pechanga. I don't even remember how many drinks she had, but I was cleaning up vomit after we got home. Lucky for her, she didn't make a mess in the car.
This is the month where I decided that having a bachelor's degree in Organizational Leadership was doing nothing for me. I was debating between a Master's degree in something or possibly going into nursing. Obviously I decided on nursing.
September 2009:I started classes at Palomar college in San Marcos. I took a couple of pre-requisites for the Nursing program. At this point, I was planning on doing pre-requisites in California and then applying to nursing schools at our next duty station, wherever that was going to be.
October 2009:I applied to one nursing program in San Diego. It is an accelerated program, year round. It was wishful thinking at this point. It was either this school or bust while we were in California. I never expected to get in, especially on my first try. I took my TEAS this month, and I didn't do as good as I liked, so I wrote nursing school off for a while and applied to a job with the county which I never got hired on for. I went through a screening process and was never selected.
November 2009: My husband was in the field for much of November, I was really bored. I remember starting to get really anxious about the upcoming looming deployment. We had Thanksgiving at my Mom's house after Ben got home from his training.
December 2009: Finally! Christmas together! We spent a few days at my grandmother's house. We tried to go to Wisconsin to visit Ben's family, but unfortunately coordinating time off didn't work very well. I finally got a job, for a whole $8/hour at a job working as a receptionist. A job for which I was completely overqualified for with both experience and education. I worked there for 3 days before I got the call that I had been accepted into the nursing program I had applied to in San Diego! YIPEEE!
January 2010: Nursing 100. I started my first semester of nursing school half way through the month. Study skills in nursing was my first nursing class I had to take. It was a total buzz kill. I hated every minute of it, especially since I already know how to study.
February 2010: Our second valentine's day actually together in the same place. We went shopping, and had sushi. It was unintentional that we kind of celebrated. Neither of us were really into celebrating or planning anything this year anyway. But, it worked out wonderfully which just proves my theory that plans seem to ruin everything.
March 2010: I said good bye to my husband for a while in March. After he left, I didn't get to talk to him or hear anything about him for nearly a month. It was awful. I have been through deployments before, but I just knew this one was going to be hell on me, worse than the others. I also turned 29 this month on the 30th. No one really remembered. It was a crappy day.
April 2010: My first semester is almost over, finals, stress, finally settling into the deployment. I planned a trip to Maine, and I was so excited to get away.
May 2010: I went to Maine for a few days, had my first lobstah roll, and overdosed on seafood. I found out I was allergic to cats, and I started semester two all in the same month.
June 2010: Here we are at this month, I'm settled in with semester 2 (the bed pan semester). Things are going well with school. Emotionally, not so well. I am still struggling to make it day to day without my husband here. The only good part about this month is that we are now on the back end of the deployment and things should hopefully all be downhill from here on out.
