So, we have quickly moved from “Yay! We have a new house!” mode into “Holy sh*t! We have a new house!” mode.

With that in mind, I don’t anticipate having much time for writing over the next couple weeks. There’s a ton of packing, moving, unpacking, painting, planting, and organizing to get done. Most of my days will be filled with efforts to make the house ours, and my evenings will be filled with taking baths in tubs filled with Ben Gay.

I’ve decided, however, that I am going to document this process through pictures. I’ll make sure to post some of them here. It should be interesting to watch this collection of wood, concrete, and drywall become our home.

I work next Monday, but then I’m taking 2 weeks of leave to pretend that my wife actually needs my help around the house. I wrote awhile back that the best part about being on leave is not having to shave. As an added bonus (if you can call looking at my ugly mug a bonus), I’ll throw up some pictures of my slowly progressing facial hair. You can watch as I am magically transformed from a baby-faced lieutenant into a slightly grizzled…baby-faced lieutenant.

So, there probably won’t be so many words over the next few weeks, but I’ve been told that pictures are worth a thousand of them. Since most of my words are either highly exaggerated or flat-out lies, you can probably double that. To get the party started, here’s a picture of my family enjoying some toasted marshmallows around the gas fire pit in our new back yard.

Most people think that Navy ships run off of fuel. They would be wrong. They do run off of a dark liquid, but it’s not gas or diesel. It’s coffee. To be fair, however, some of the coffee that we drink could actually make an engine turn.

I was never a huge fan of coffee until my first deployment. I was always more of a Mountain Dew man. If I needed a little caffeine, I’d just grab a Dew and carry on smartly. Then, something changed when I got underway. I no longer needed a little caffeine. I needed a lot of caffeine. When the decision came to spend $10 a day on soda or get coffee for free, the choice was pretty easy.

It took awhile for the taste to grow on me. It was bitter, harsh, and all around kind of gross. It probably doesn’t help that we tend to brew our coffee in a way that would put hair on your chest and then burn it right back off again. It’s fair to say that most sailors like their java pretty strong.

Pretty soon, it started to grow on me. This might be because I really began to like the taste, or it might be because all of my taste buds died off. Either way, it became my drink of choice.

On a ship, coffee is everywhere. You can walk onto the mess decks any time of day and get a cup. Most workcenters have their own pot as well. Nearly everybody has their own cup that means something to them. They may be from a previous command or have pictures of their kids, but there are few things more sacred underway than someone’s coffee cup.

Towards the end of deployment number 3, I was drinking about 7 or 8 cups a day, so I forced myself to cut back before my heart decided to explode. It was tough, but after a couple weeks of intense detoxing, I was back down to a couple cups. It probably didn’t help that my wife slipped a pound of two of grounds into every package that she sent. It probably isn’t a huge surprise that the Navy doesn’t exactly buy Kona coffee in bulk. Opening a box to find a bag of brand name coffee was a huge boost to morale. Since I normally shared it with the rest of my division, I tended to be a fairly popular guy. People would actually ask when my next package was set to arrive.

Now, I’m down to about a cup per day. I don’t really drink it to stay awake anymore. I actually like the taste. It’s bitter, harsh, and all around kind of awesome. I’m sure my intake will increase once I get back on a ship, but my heart has been rested.

As a word of advice, if you do happen to send out care packages to sailors, it might not be a bad idea to include a bag of quality coffee. It is, after all, what makes the Navy go.

Yesterday, I wrote about my superstitious ways and how I was applying them to buying a house. Well, it turns out that I did a great job of not jinxing it. A few hours after posting the article, we got a call that said the house was ours.

This was, of course, huge news for us. This is our first house, and we have worked incredibly hard to get to this point. The sense of accomplishment and pride in my family is hard to describe. After dragging them all around the country for the past 8 years, we are finally able to settle in one place long enough to actually call it home. That’s a pretty good feeling.

Since we’re huge dorks and pretty sappy, we decided to celebrate in a symbolic fashion. We drove to the house, picking up dinner and a bottle of wine on the way. We unlocked the door, and I even carried my wife across the threshold. We’ve been together for a decade, but better late than never.

We sat down in the back yard with the sun setting, ate our dinner, and drank some wine (juice for the kids). We toasted a few different times, and nobody could wipe the smile off their face. One of our favorite features of the house is the gas fire pit in the backyard. Therefore, we also brought a bag of marshmallows and toasted them with the kids. It was pretty awesome.

To make things even dorkier, we each brought a single item that we cherished and wanted to move into the house first. Little Dude brought one of his toy cars. Princess brought her favorite stuffed animal. Military Gramma brought her wind chimes. I brought my Dan Marino jersey, and my wife brought a terrific picture of the kids that will go on our mantle (she’s obviously a much better parent than I am).

Our goal was to make last night as relaxing as humanly possible considering the circumstances, and I think we did ok. There’s a lot of hard work coming up with packing, moving, cleaning, painting, and the thousand other things that are going to have to happen over the next few weeks. Walking around the house can be a little overwhelming because it’s hard to decide what to tackle first. Last night was our chance to enjoy the calm before the storm. We did that, so I guess it’s now time to get down to work. Does anybody feel like stopping by to help move a piano?

I once told my wife “I’m not superstitious. It’s bad luck to be superstitious.”

The truth is that when it comes to certain things, I am incredibly superstitious. A couple weeks ago, I wrote about how my favorite article of clothing is an 18 year old Dan Marino jersey. It’s so important to me that I will probably pass it down to somebody in my will, but there’s no way that I would actually wear it while watching a Dolphins game. Wearing a retired player’s jersey could give the current players a complex, and I can’t risk that.

If I’m watching college basketball and the Jayhawks score 12 points in a row, there’s no way I move from where I’m sitting. It doesn’t matter how bad I have to pee or how long the commercial break is. Somehow, my perfect sofa positioning in San Diego is affecting the team’s energy in Lawrence, KS. If I were to move, I would be letting my team down. That’s just irresponsible fandom.

If watching the match from my knees in a semi-praying position while wearing a gray t-shirt with blue lettering and drinking a “Revive” Vitamin Water helped Landon Donovan net the goal that sent USA through to the knock-out round in the last World Cup…well, I don’t want to take all the credit (although a simple thank you would be nice).

Alas, the sports landscape is a little bleak right now. College basketball is over and football has yet to begin. Watching the NBA makes my eye twitch and watching baseball makes me…
…
…

Sorry about that. It appears that simply writing about baseball makes me fall asleep. The World Cup is 2 years away. The European Championship is coming up, but watching France and Italy fall over and cry every time the breeze picks up gets a little old.

Don’t worry though. I’ve found a new outlet for my superstitious ways: house buying. I’ve mentioned it a couple times in the past, but we are trying to buy our first house. We’re actually very close to closing on one. In fact, there’s a good chance that we will actually get the keys today (knock on wood) or tomorrow (fingers crossed). Its the perfect house in the perfect neighborhood, and it’s everything that we want, but I refuse to acknowledge that we’re going to get it. As soon as I start thinking that it’s going to happen, something will go wrong.

This was easy when we first started. I told myself that there’s no way they’ll accept our offer. After that, I knew that the inspection would find a family of ill-tempered wolverines living in the walls (I just about wrote “our” walls…that was close). It started getting tougher though after things kept going right. The appraisal went off without a hitch. The bank actually decided to give us money. Everything has been going incredibly smoothly.

To the best of my knowledge the only thing left is to have the deed recorded. After that, the house becomes…well, I don’t want to jinx it.

When it comes to the traditional husband/wife roles around the house, I don’t worry about it to much. To be completely honest, my wife is better at most things anyway. I’m still needed to reach things on the top shelf and open pickle jars, but if you want someone to install a sprinkler head or put together a new bookcase, she’s the one you should probably talk to. I’m still more likely to mow the lawn than mop the floor, but I certainly don’t shy away from the indoor chores either.

There are 2 areas where I retain my manly duties however. Like I’ve mentioned before, spiders fall firmly under my jurisdiction. The other responsibility is investigating strange noises in the night. Whenever there is a suspicious sound after hours, I’m the first one out of bed. Sometimes, CinC HOUSE will insist on checking things out as well, but I make sure that I am always the first person into a room. You can call it bravado or the need to protect my family, but it’s something that I take very seriously. Sometimes, I might take it too seriously because I’m usually up for the rest of the night.

When I was in college, I had somebody break into my apartment early one morning while I was taking a shower. In a somewhat awkward encounter, I was able to chase him away before he stole anything, but I wasn’t able to sleep very well for a couple weeks afterwards.

Before we had kids, it wasn’t too bad. If I walked through the house and there was nothing there, I could just get back in bed. The only other person that I really cared about protecting was there with me anyway. As long as she was safe, there was nothing to worry about. I would still stay awake for a couple hours, but I could just lie in bed.

Now with kids, everything is escalated. They are the first concern, and since they sleep in a different room, I can’t just stare at my own ceiling anymore. I’ll lie there thinking about all the possibilities. What was the sound? Did it come from outside, or was it in the house? Did I really search the garage well enough? Did I just hear it again?

After asking all these questions and ensuring that my heart rate stays around 135, I’ll usually just get up. I’ll check the house one more time, make sure the family is ok, and then position myself in the central room of the house to watch over everything. Sometimes, I’ll turn on the TV and watch reruns of Cheers at a low volume. Sometimes, I’ll fire up the Playstation for some mindless fun.

Tonight, I decided to write a blog post about it. We all heard a metallic noise of some sort. It might have been the neighbor’s wind chime falling or our cat walking across a pan, but whatever it was, I’m probably up for the long haul. Good morning.

I think shore duty is weakening me. This is most evident in my sleep patterns. The pattern that I’m talking about is the fact that I actually sleep now.

As a SWO, sleep is a bit of a luxury when you’re underway. There is always more than 24 hours worth of work to get done every day, so you have to sacrifice a few hours of rest every once in a while. We routinely have watches in the middle of the night, and as much as we try to sneak in naps, they aren’t always possible. As a result, we usually spend a good percentage of our time in zombie mode. I know that I have gone at least 48 hours straight without sleep (probable longer). While that’s on the extreme side, it’s by no means uncommon, and I know there are others who have went far longer than that.

During my last deployment, I had an evening meeting that I had to put together that ended around 9:00. I had other work that usually kept me up until 11:30 or so. If I actually had the energy to e-mail my wife, I was in my office until at least midnight. Throw in a shower and a little bit of wind down time, and I usually crawled into bed around 12:30 or 1:00. Then, I had another presentation that had to be put together for a 7:00 a.m. meeting. In order to get it assembled correctly, I had to be back in the office around 5:00, which meant I set my alarm for about 4:30. That was my schedule for the majority of the deployment. Throw in a night watch every 3rd night or so, and it really took its toll. I’d try to take naps during lunch if possible, but there were responsibilities and watches throughout the day as well.

It’s tough, but it’s just something that we learn to deal with. While I hated the situation, I realized that it wasn’t going to change, so there was no point getting too upset. I would just roll out of bed in the morning, install my coffee IV drip, and get to work. When I came home from deployment, the schedule mostly stayed the same for me. I would feel incredibly groggy if I got more than 6 hours of sleep, and I woke up from naps like seriously p*ssed off bear. As a result, I would usually go to bed around 11:00, and I never slept past 5:00.

Now, fast forward through 3 and a half years of shore duty. Last night at 8:30 (after watching 2 episodes of The Big Bang Theory), I had the choice between going to bed and playing a brand new video game that I just bought. After looking back and forth between the TV and my bedroom, I chose sleep. It was 8:30!!! Sure, I might have read for a little bit, but I was completely asleep by 9:00. I used to lie down with my wife until she fell asleep. Then I would get up and watch TV or surf the internet until I got tired. Then, I would wake up before the rest of the house to play video games and enjoy some time to myself. Now, my wife has to wake me up if I forget to turn my light off.

Last weekend, I slept in until 8:00. 8:00!!! I realize that’s not super late for the rest of the world, but trust me when I say that I never sleep in that late. I think I got 10 hours of sleep that night. It used to take me 3 days to get that much sleep. Part of me wants to celebrate this fact and fully experience the glory. The other part of me looks at the quickly approaching end to my shore duty and cringes. It’s going to hurt to go from this back to the ship. The good part is that I’m going to be a department head, so everybody expects me to be crabby anyway.

In Service, Marcus Luttrell takes the reader past the events of Operation Redwing and describes the next few years of his career after being the sole survivor of that fateful mission. I had a feeling that I would enjoy this book after reading the first paragraph of the preface:

“I’ve written this book to honor the skill, courage, and sacrifice of the exceptional people I know who serve not only in the SEAL teams but in all the other service branches who I’ve served with along the way. Really this is a book for all who serve. It’s for anyone who wears the uniform; who, when the shooting starts, move toward the gunfire instead of away from it. It’s for the brave breed of individuals, the warfighters, who put everything on the line because it is expected of them, because they stand up for the United States and sometimes die for the privilege.”

This book describes the events following Luttrell’s rescue after Operation Redwing. It discusses some of his rehabilitation as well as his incorporation back into the SEAL teams. Once it’s time to deploy, he suits up just like everyone else and heads back to the war.

He takes us through the fast paced action of the war in Ramadi, Iraq as he and his team attempt to take control of the city. Parts of the story are action packed, and other parts are heart-breaking, but it’s never boring. It gives you a first-hand view of what war looks like.

Personally, I think the true value of this book is the way it depicts Navy SEALs. It gives you a unique perspective into the training and fighting that they go through. More importantly, you get to see the mindset that it takes to be a SEAL. Once you read about the sacrifice and pain that they go through, it gives you a whole new appreciation for what they do. It becomes clear early on in this book that it takes a special breed to wear the trident on their chest.

If you love reading about Navy SEALs, or if you just want to see what real heroes look like, you should definitely pick up this book. It’s a fairly quick read, but it will certainly leave an impression.