I’m Back and More Crazy Than Ever – This is My Chaotic Life.
Soooooooo yea it’s been a minute since I last wrote. That’s my chaotic life.
A handful of you say this blog is helpful for the military life stuff or that you think I am funny and relatable, or that I am a captivating writer/story teller. I just didn’t and don’t really believe it. I’m just a classic gal who gets bad imposter syndrome. AKA I totally laughed off when people would say that because I never thought this blog would see the light of day. I also cringe saying ‘I write a blog’ because I don’t want to be grouped into the blogger/influencer category. But I’m also not a writer. Or am I? Who is even considered a writer? What are the qualifications? Brb, gonna go ask SJP.
Either way, I didn’t feel like I had anything interesting or worthwhile to say? Maybe I do? Maybe I don’t? What makes me the expert on anything? Sarcasm? Accidental life lessons like don’t wear socks on the stairs? Over confidence? My stunning gorgeous looks and amazing style?
*shrugs*
Do any of those things make you an expert?
Googles ‘what is an expert‘.
I honestly have no idea, but here I am – 1,648 days later – and A LOT has happened, so let’s recap. Forgive me because this is likely going to be long, but honestly… idc because I am honestly writing this for myself. A virtual journal if you will. And if you are reading this, buckle in, because I’m all over the place right now- If you haven’t already picked up on that.
Where does one even begin?
2019
I stopped writing. I felt weird for some reason. It felt cringy saying I had a blog. It felt cringy promoting it. I also didn’t want to be compared to someone else we loosely knew, and I really didn’t want to be in the same bracket. Nothing personal, we are just completely different people and the purposes of the blogs were completely different. I look back and should have said F it, and not care, but sue me, I cared about my image and what people thought of me etc.
So I stopped, but it was also because I was busier and working. I had finally found a job at an OBGYN office and man did I learn a lot about the female reproductive system and everything entangled in that. Also side note- you would be amazed how many people (i.e. men) call OBGYN offices asking if we can remove items from their orifices…. the answer is no, go to the ED in case you were wondering.
So 2019 was filled (lol) with pregnancies and babies and studying to become a lactation consultant, but of course that all was halted. We all know where this is going…
2020 ~Pre COVID~ Pre- Chaos
Woah is all I have to say. The year started out amazing. Feb 1 we went to Asheville, NC to see The Lumineers. Drove 6 hours, had a huge stupid fight (not the amazing part) that we repaired with pinball competitions and beer at The Pinball Museum and then went to the show. We arrived to see that we had the absolute worst seats in the house.
This isn’t even a slight exaggeration. We were like 3 feet away from the video board, so our eyes would’ve been fried to smithereens if we even tried to look at it. Forget looking at the stage because the speakers blocked any view of the stage we had too. Naturally, Drew knew I was not thrilled that we had come all this way for my favorite band and ended up in worse than nosebleeds. I tried to keep my cool and be happy we were there, meanwhile he went to the bathroom, or so I thought.
He called me and said “come down here”, I look and this amazing perfect husband of mine is standing with a suit man at the bottom of our section.
If Father Alex Cooper ever reads this, we like this one suit man, and only this one.
I will never let Drew forget how clutch this was. Somehow, he found this suit-man and explained the situation. Suit man said ‘Ticketmaster isn’t supposed to sell those seats.”. AKA he knew exactly where we had been sat and resolved the problem… by walking us down to the floor and into the pit. THE PIT! For my all time favorite band. It was in incredible show and an incredible night and a huge turn around to the day we were having.
At the time there were mumblings on the news about COVID, but we all kind of lived in our own oblivious worlds until mid-March.
2020 ~Enter COVID~ Enter Full Chaos
It’s Friday, March 13, 2020. We were on the way to Wilmington, NC for St. Patrick’s Day weekend/my birthday and Drew was on the way to his first K-court to get his first call sign. We were both in for a really fun weekend. As we arrived, the news was blowing up with lockdowns and was saying the SPD parties were cancelled and lockdown would begin Monday. We we’re really sure what to think about threats that the world was ending and the Apocalypse was imminent. Do we get our affairs in order? Do we go home? Most importantly, how long will our toilet paper last?
Toilet Paper: The Nation’s Choke Hold
Anywayyyyy – The whole group was already in Wilmington, so we kind of just went with it. What else were we going to do about an unknown illness? And in comparison to New York we were in small town NC, we figured we had time before the rapture, so we partied like it was 2012. That weekend was wild in all the ways you could think possible. I’m not even going to get into it on a public forum, but that lockdown was a blessing in disguise.
I started my 27th year of life locked away in rural NC like Rapunzel in her tower. Except not really, because I was an essential worker, so it was honestly business as usual, until the deployment.
Drew ended up deploying to Spain May 19, 2020 until October 2, 2020. Enter Rapunzel Danni. I was full on paranoid because I was alone and if I got sick what was I going to do? What was Drew going to do? What were Tuna and Mahi going to do? Who was going to braid my hair and keep me looking cute if I was on a ventilator? *JOKING*
^That’s dark nursing humor folks
I was in full survival mode. I didn’t go anywhere unless I needed to. Avoiding people was the name of the game. I didn’t want to get sick. I couldn’t afford to get sick, for myself, or my job with high risk patients.
So, naturally I met a new human at the grocery store, who offered me a higher paying job at Camp Lejeune on a Mother/Baby Unit and I took it. Because it makes total sense to increase my risk of getting sick by entering a hospital 3-4x/week, where people believe COVID is a hoax. COMPLETE SENSE.
~Sarcasm~
*This isn’t political, this is science* Please kindly go somewhere else if you disagree.
If someone told me at the beginning of 2020 that I was going to experience a global pandemic, my husband’s first deployment, a national/international human rights shit show of hatred, and starting a new job in a hospital during said pandemic and lockdown, I would’ve laughed in your face.
Looking back, it’s honestly a miracle I didn’t lose my damn mind or enter a deep dark depression. A deployment is one thing. A new job is another thing, but a LOCKDOWN?! Everyone hating everyone because of the color of their skin or who they vote for or if they’re wearing a mask or not?! Like it was and honestly still is a mess and it’s just so sad how polarizing we are now.
Anyways, I literally had no one when it came down to needing to vent or have someone to just be with. I couldn’t and if you’re reading this like ‘you had me?!’ nah it’s not like that. Nothing replaces your life partner. They get the dark and down and dirty. They don’t judge when you’re at your worst. I was probably at my worst.
I now know that the ‘friends’ I thought I had during that time, had some feelings about who I was and instead of being a friend and asking if I was good, they shut me out. But whatever, everyone can have boundaries, and I’ll respect that. Even if I disagree.
Which brings me to – Regular non-military people
They will truly just never understand deployments no matter how much we explain them. Paired with the 2020 shit show, it’s honestly just not fair to judge someone’s behavior who was going thru what I was going thru. You aren’t yourself, no matter what you do to try to be. Your other half is missing and you can’t talk to them about your dark, down, dirty days because they’re in their own dark and dirty deployment (more on this in a post). But it happened and I’m better and stronger for it. It’s a lived experience and that’s really all I can say about it.
To all the people, who have survived deployments like this… you’re incredible and amazing and strong, and you can really do all things because like I said, that was a mess of a time. I’ll have to do a deployments post or something, but for now back to recaps.
So yea, 2020 was a lonely mess and when Drew came back in October, I felt normal again. We attended a COVID wedding and then were lucky enough to get the COVID vaccines for our jobs in early 2021.
2021 – slightly less chaos
Still a mess, but slightly better than 2020. Random story time: In February (Drew’s least favorite month), Drew found the tiniest lump on Tuna’s ear. A pea sized lump if not smaller. What he was doing feeling around the crooks of Tuna’s ears, I still don’t know, but it was a blessing. Turns out it was mast cell tumor, so a chunk of Tuna (LOL) was removed and he lived in a cone for a long and bruised leg filled 2 months. We called him Tuba (still cracks me up) and he ran into everything, providing much needed comedic relief.
During that period of time, working at the hospital became taxing, and honestly was getting a little to sketchy for my liking. I wanted to protect myself, my patients, my license, and my mental health. To do so, I decided to leave the bedside. I was in the happiest place in the hospital, but people were just not nice.
They couldn’t be pleased.
I knew and know my worth, so I searched around, and found something new. That’s how I became a NICU utilization review / case manager in a work from home position. Which we will have to get into another time because that’s a whole can of worms, but right now layoffs are looming and I’m not sitting pretty. I’m like a sitting duck at the chopping block. Like Anne Boleyn. Like John Wayne Bobbitt. Is that too crude? Oh well. We’re getting raw, crude Danni here.
I’m trying to think what else happened in 2021, but honestly, both 2020 and 2021 were kind of fake years. Like nothing could really happen because the world drama and pandemic. I’m not even going to get into the political mess and drama that the world became, because I just don’t have the mental capacity to recap that. I distracted myself with random things like my photography business and really just tried to exist without losing my mind.
2022 – slightly more chaos
The world really started to open back up and we learned that we were moving back to VA in the summer, but before that we had to go thru another deployment. Again, I think I am going to write another post talking about deployments and how to navigate that madness because this was a different, but still challenging deployment.
Anywho, We had a week of craziness leading up to the deployment, but he officially left Feb 1, 2022 and came back June 3, 2022. During that time, I was a solo milspo *qwwwwweeeennn* and listed, staged, and sold our NC home while he was gone and also packed our whole house, so we could move when he got home. Ohh maybe I’ll do a post on my packing tips too.
When he got back, we had about 2 weeks of full on chaos before we moved up to Quantico, VA June 26, 2022 for Expeditionary Warfare School (EWS). ~Another upcoming post alert~ probably gonna do a tell all about navigating EWS too. Look at me being a content queen.
2023 – less chaos on the horizon.. or so I thought
Our time in Quantico was short, but we made the most of it and being closer to family and friends was truly such a treat. The school is only 10 months long, so you basically make plans to move to your next location before you are even fully settled in Quantico. Which is probably going to be another story because we FULL on thought we were moving to San Diego.
Like it was about as certain as you could be in the military, but that’s the USMC for you – expect the unexpected and nothing is ever EVER set in stone or for sure. AKA I am not writing this from the beautiful beaches or outdoor coffee shops of sunny and perfect weather San Diego…
PRESENT – My Chaotic Life Currently
Let’s paint a picture for you- I am wearing a maroon, oversized Virginia Tech sweatshirt, black spandex and crusty white Nike high tops. My hair is a frizzy mess on top of my head. My face is sprayed with some CBD vitamin D spray that I have no idea what is does, is probably expired, but smells good and was a gift, is paired with bags under my eyes and a sarcastic disposition.
The Starbucks (happy national coffee day) that I’m sitting in is freezing, but I needed a change of scenery or else I was going to do something chaotic like cut bangs or rearrange the house. Playing over head, and also in my headphones, is ‘Autumn Leaves’ by our favorite UK red head, Ed Sheeran. His new album Autumn Variations dropped today and it’s perfect.
I’m drinking an iced pumpkin chai, while I look out the window and envision crispy red and orange leaves swirling around the traffic…for a moment… I snap back to reality and remember I’m not in Harrisonburg, VA or the perfect magical scenery of Stars Hollow in the fall.
I wish.
I’m in sweltering, balls hot, drab and dead Texas where it’s 88 degrees F, which is honestly an improvement from the 115 degrees we were experiencing. There aren’t tall pines, cozy vibes, or really even anything remotely reminiscent to a beautiful beginning of fall, but this is home for now. I am very aware that I sound so blehhhh about this place. I just need to explain that it’s not my favorite, and that’s ok.
I’m allowed to feel this way.
It’s really not THAT terrible and could always be worse, but it’s not our forever. I’m making the most of it. For the most part I’m putting on a good attitude, but for right now you’re getting real, raw, honesty. I’m also just in a mewd and that’s why I came back here. I needed to write and needed to get this out.
When I started this blog in 2018, I felt so damn lost. I didn’t have a job. Hurricane Florence had just wrecked our lives. I was down. Discouraged. I was lonely. Probably broken, and likely a little depressed. I needed an outlet and I wanted to put my thoughts out there, so that one day I could come back and see what I’ve accomplished. And I now see that I accomplished. I did. I survived. Maybe even thrived at some point.
I have always tried to find the humor in most situations and I love a good story, so I wrote and was ‘winging it’ the whole time. Did I know what I was doing?? No. Do I now?? Still no. Am I cringing at myself writing this for probably 3 random strangers? Yep. But here I am. So if you’ve made it this far, woweee, impressive.
Let’s get raw – this lifestyle isn’t easy. This is my chaotic life.
It isn’t for the faint of heart. There are challenges and ups and downs. The challenges come with everything. The moving. The military. Finances. Friendships. Jobs. Home owning / renting. Literally everything.
We’ve moved 8 or so times and while I feel like a seasoned spicy military spouse who has it down and has everything together, I most certainly do not. I feel like only a select few people really understand me or what we’re going thru.
Social media is such a veil to our lives and I put A LOT out there. I’m putting a lot out here, but at the end of the day, I think only a few select people really know the true me and what’s going on in my life. We have friends/acquaintances all over the world, but that’s just it, we’re always ships passing with people.
Friends for the moment.
And while I would LOVE to maintain every friendship we make along the way, it’s so hard to really do that across timezones and life and work and kids etc. I wish I could do it all. I just can’t and shut down and enter a cycle of feeling like I’m alone because making friends as an adult is hard any way you slice it.
If you know us, you know we can talk to walls and we can make acquaintances easily. It’s the cultivating and nurturing the friendships that’s hard. I’ll be your fierce friend if you let me, but I don’t think that happens, and that’s ok. People like their comforts. They like their steady friend groups. They like not disrupting that, and I get it, but it doesn’t make finding new friends in places you’re new in any easier.
That’s been one of the most challenging parts of moving here. We didn’t know anyone when we got here and while we have met some really incredible humans, it’s still hard to feel like yourself when you’re always starting over with new people. Some people love it because they can reinvent themselves over and over, but for me personally, it feels like Groundhog Day.
How many versions of myself are there?
If I make too many am I going to splice myself out like in one of those time travel movies? Do I even know who I am anymore? 2020 threw a whole wrench in everyone’s lives and I feel like maybe I entered a vortex of full chaos. I’m not an astrology girlie, but I’m also not NOT an astrology girlie. This is all probably my Saturn Returning or something.
I sit here writing all of this feeling so lost. Lost in my friendships, lost in a job that I don’t feel fulfilled in, but one I very much need to be able to feed and support our lives. I feel lost in what I’m passionate about. Lost in what I’m supposed to be doing.
Are we supposed to be doing anything?
Am I making a difference?
Am I just existing?
What am I doing?
Where am I going?
Who am I?
When will I feel fulfilled?
Who am I?
What am I doing?
What is my passion?
Do I have passions anymore?
That’s what started all of this. Last night I was asked one simple question.
One simple question.
One. Simple. Question.
“What are you passionate about?”
Drew
While simple and straightforward, it’s so much more than that. It’s complex and has sent me into a full tailspin – no way really?! You don’t say.
I started this blog when I was lost. I have restarted this blog and am lost again. I’m not trying to be a downer or pessimist or *insert other negative human qualities*. At this time, I’m just writing my real and raw emotions. I’m not asking for anything. I don’t need anything. Or maybe I do? Idk.
So for now, we’re coming back. We’re writing it all out again.
Will people read this? Probably not.
Will I become a viral tiktok sensation like Alix Earle or Alex Cooper because I’m writing about my bland life? Also, probably no. No one can be like the Big Als.
Welcome to My Chaotic Life
Have I been told I’m funny and should write or have a podcast? Obviously. Duh. Have you been reading this? It’s layered with jokes.
If you didn’t laugh, you didn’t get the joke.
Or I’m just not funny.
Is there a goal?
Nope.
Do I have a format?
Nope.
What am I doing?
Winging. It.
Welcome back to Wing It Wife and My Chaotic Life.
Please God let me figure out wtf I’m supposed to be doing. Or like send me a road map on how to navigate this shit.
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