just call me jack...ie

Jackie of all trades that is.

Since Shaun's been gone (Since You Been Gone is playing through my compter iTunes and it is incredibly hard not to type those lyrics when writing 'since Shaun's been gone') I have been a great many things...

I believe we should start with fish tank fixer, Shaun the frog reviver, and all out superwoman. That was day one.

Since then:

• referee, like all day every day
• zombie-I can NOT seem to sleep at night
• the usual things: cook, maid, taxi driver
• the not so usual: nose booger remover (my life is so glamorous I almost can't stand it) and sick child comforter
• bath giver and dishes doer: for the love of all things holy can I please have my husband back?? These are his chores and gosh darnit he just does them WAY better than me!
• dog food and water-er...although Lilly did this on her own today and for a second I thought I'd died and gone to Heaven
• fish feeder...except when I forget...
• grocery shopper: by me self with my three little amigos...can you believe they don't sell liquor either? Fail, I believe is the word. Just think of all the poor pitiful mommies out there that could benefit from a little Mommy Time Out aisle!
• identity check-er: And no I actually don't mean the identity of my identical twins. I'm speaking more of going to above mentioned grocery store, on base. You don't realize how many men in the Air Force have shaved heads until you are shopping with your son and he calls out "DADDY DADDY" to every. single. man. who remotely looks like his father. Awkward.
• a regular old Jane Fonda: Well if Jane Fonda was about 10 sizes bigger, had darker hair, and a membership to the Y. And shin splits. I'm trying though!
• silly picture pro-photographer

• AND as if the fish tank drama of day 1 wasnt enough, I was fish life saver today! At the risk of this whole deployment being remembered as Kristy vs. Shaun, the frog and his accomplice fish, I'll tell you the story. Lucky you.

So, it started when I got the medicine basket off the top shelf in the kitchen. (No story can ever be good when it begins with that sentence, don't you think?) I got vitamins or something out of it and then went on about my business. Well the girls knocked it and it fell to the floor. At that point I realized it was left out and now dumped so I go in and begin cleaning it up with the girls help, all the time kicking myself in the butt for leaving it down. A few seconds later Lilly wondered off (because that's what Lilly girls do when it is time to clean up) and came back telling me there was medicine in the fish tank. Are you kidding me?!?

So I go from one almost catastophe to another. The fish tank actually only had an empty medicine syringe floating in it. You know the kind you give liquid medicine to children with. Parker, who is the culprit 110% of the time when the tank had inanimate floaters in it, had put it in there. However, after getting it out I realize the pump it not working. And the FISH ARE DYING WITH EVERY PASSING SECOND. This can not, will not happen on my watch. Don't judge, but I'm about 50/50 on whether my kids being sad or my having to scoop out about 25 dead fish would be worse.

So, Miss Smarty Pants as I am remember that stinkin' volcano that that stinkin' crab messed with on the first day of this stinkin' deployment. It made bubbles. So, being the aquatic sealife engineer that I am, I rigged that fella up to pump air bubbles into the water so the fish would at least have oxygen. That's pracically life resesitating, right? Slowly I'm overcoming my fear of the nasty slime that fish tanks develop. And no, I don't see this as a good thing. I was perfectly fine having the I-don't-do-fish-tank-slime girly character flaw.

Anywho, after a cry out for help via Facebook and a quick call to a pet store for info, I knew my fish would survive long enough for me to get to the grocery store and get the girls to school (late...red stick for me). Fast forward about 6 hours, one groery store trip, 2 loads of laundry folded, 1 dinner made, 15 calls answered, 1 haircut for P, and one coke for this momma and I finally talked to our resident Dr. Doolittle, Shaun. I was able to show him all the slimey mess how things looked and he walked me through checking several things. He started with having me make sure it was plugged in. He has so much confidnce in me. LOL! Anywho, we got it running just a trickle, but since we don't want our tank to look like swamp land by the end of his trip, I went out to Petsmarts to get a few parts that may fix it. Yes, parts. I don't really do parts perse. However, tomorrow I'm going to add fish-tank-filter/pump-repairwoman to my resume.

Oh joy.

And, for the record, a random military person I assume from Shaun's unit called my cell phone tonight to check in on us. I'm not sure if this is normal or if he head about my DHS/Animal Control post, but he asked if I needed anything. HA! With a big, deep breathe and all the self-restraint I had in me, and perhaps through clinched teeth, politely said 'no thanks' that we were fine.

As fine as a referee, cook, maid, taxi driver, fish reviver, identity protector, Jane Fonda by day, zombie by night can be.

This reminds me to tell you sometime about how little self-restraint I had when "checking in" with Shaun's commander during his first deployment...