HAPPY NEW YEAR

We're up in Indiana visiting family. It's a good feeling to be home. I wish everyone a happy new year!

An Update

I think Alison is feeling better today. Hopefully, she'll improve soon. She's been limited in activity by a pain in her back that rendered her barely able to walk. She's hurting. Here's a pic from our reunion though:

Alison's Creation

I've come home and I'm enjoying my beautiful kitchen. Alison did a great job!



Thanks for trusting me with the orange, baby.

I'm Home

I'm home... and it's great. The six months seems like a short memory, and I would do it again tomorrow to get that feeling of first seeing my wife in the airport again. That first kiss.

Speaking of Alison, she was a busy bee when I was away. The kitchen looks great, and she did the bedroom too! I'm WAY ahead of 'schedule' now with the remodeling, and look forward to enjoying the new rooms instead of laboring away in them like I had the others. She did a marvelous job, and thanks are due to all that helped her.

See you soon...

Coming Home Soon...

I'm at that stage where it's probably too early to pack, but it's not too early to plan to pack. I'm almost packed, in otherwords. I head for Hiroshima on Wednesday morning, then on to Tokyo. Then Atlanta, and finally Charleston. I'm realizing that the christmas vacation will be too short. I don't want to hit the ground running, but judging from all the events and wickets I have to hit, nothing short of a sprint will get everything done.

Last night was Mess Night for the squadron. We ate dinner together, and made fun of eachother, etc. The Guest of Honor spoke about our return home, and how the Marine Corps is not the priority when we get back. How we need to decompress. How things are different state-side. That's true. I need to give my full attention to my marriage. However, I am coming home with a Marine Corps mission to accomplish, and I think that's why I feel the time-crunch.

Thanks in advance for the family and friends that will be fine with seeing me only for a short time. Thanks, Alison, for being with me always. I'll see you soon.

Of Course

I just got back from the hospital. Once again, I am never sick, but freakish things happen to me. Tonight I was playing basketball when I tried to steal the ball from another guy. Our heads collided, and my skin was lacerated by his forehead and my eye-socket bone ridge. 5 stitches, swelling, and a glob of Bacitracin slighty skew my vision as I am writing this. I should have seen it coming really. I always have something weird happen right before I go anywhere.

To US: 5 stitches over my eye
To Japan: A huge rash over 90% of my body
To Athens, GA: Falling out of a tree
To Beaufort from Yuma in 04: Boil/rash in my armpit that hasseled me through XMAS

Breathing out a little

I am back in my youth, sitting at the bottom of the pool and waiting. Waiting as long as I can, holding my breath in, letting it out little by little, to squash the panicking feeling that builds in your heart before you suffocate. The little breaths make you think you're breathing. So I sit here indian-style, at the bottom of the pool, waiting to breathe.

Things I never knew I'd miss about being away from Alison:

1) Magazines I have no interest in looking at filling baskets around the house. These include: Southern Living, Real Simple, People, the occasional Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Style, and Lucky.

2) Walking into the bathroom and pulling the plugs from the sockets to the curling iron and blow dryer. I always try to remind her that it may burn the house down, but she does leaves them heaved into the wall anyways. It's not that I miss that she does this, but it's more I'm scared that the one time I don't unplug them, the house will burn down. I miss being able to ensure safety.

3) Her honking at me whenever I walk in front of the car. She reaches over and presses the horn, effectively scaring the bejeezes out of me. The horn is a lot louder when you're a foot away from it. I even sort of miss the fact that she gets pissy with me when I honk at her (so I'm not allowed to retaliate anymore).

4) Losing fights. I'm always the first one to give in. Especially when I'm right. It makes me feel like I am making a tiny sacrifice for our love. Martyrdom is a word.

5) Water glasses by the bed. I don't do the water glass thing when she's not around. Alison requires a tall glass of cold water by her bedside in order to go to sleep. She rarely drinks it. So by the end of the week, we have six glasses of water lying around, half-full and room temperature. Not really sure why I miss this. I think it's because i miss having things around that I don't like.

Commemorating a Deployment

We've begun to cast our lot at immortality here in Japan. Each unit leaves paintings on the wall. The photo above is the beginning of our mural. Drawing by yours truly, painting an all-hands effort.

Happenings

So it's time I fess up to my plans and what's going on with me. For about two weeks now, I've been investigating Law Schools. I have an opportunity to have the Marine Corps assign me to a school as a duty station. They'd pay me like they do now, and cover the tuition as well. The deal sweetens when you consider that for 3 years of school, I won't deploy. The icing on the cake is the 10K per year bonus that I'll receive once I've passed the bar; it's the Marine Corps' way of enticing me to stay in.

So it's crunch time with me. I have to decide tomorrow whether I'll take the LSAT in February or June. Registration deadline for Feb 15 is 9 December. I am leaning towards taking a prep class and then the course in June, applying in the fall to schools in Indiana or Columbia SC, and then applying to have the Marine Corps assign me to the FLEP (Funded Law Education Program) in the spring of 2007. Either way, the spring of 2007 is the first time I'll be eligible to apply. One of the criteria is being accepted to a law school upon application. Application deadline is each year, March 1st, and by March 1 2006, I wouldn't even have my score back.

If this is all news to you, and you're like "WOAH. Tom a lawyer?", you can join the club! I am that way too. But it makes sense when you think about my life's course. I have a BA in fine-art, though I am no artist. I've always strived for 'big things', i.e. basketball, Marines, art, house remodeling, marrying the beautiful and hard-to-catch Alison. And I've been saying for a while now that since I've left school, I have a genuine desire to learn.

In reflecting on my academic past, and in light of the Hurricane Katrina, I've begun my story of four years in New Orleans, as I remember it. So far, it's been no indistinct memory.

Liberation!

Today I was listening to DeathCab for Cutie's 'Transatlanticism.' One of the lyrics Ben Gibbard wrote says, "Yeah, she was beautiful, but she didn't mean a thing to me." And I thought about that. Yep. Marriage is liberation. And only dudes will know what I mean. But I'll try to explain anyways, in a manner that won't get my ribs poked by every female I know. Here goes:

At the onset of adolescence, each male is trained (nature and nurture) to evaluate/notice pretty girls. It happens. And each time we notice someone beautiful, we silently plot on ways to be with them. But that is no more for guys like me. And it's wonderful when you realize it. Beautiful girls (we notice less) that we DO see, become mere images. No mental clicks and snaps happen in our brains. That part of wanting to be near is filled by someone we're glad is near. My wife fills that part of me in the way I wanted (she's beautiful and sexy), but she does so much more. She's like the best friend, the caring-mom AND the sexy girlfriend. And that's what being a wife is. Atleast a good one.

Hopefully the reverse is true also. Girls keep their wants on the downlow. But I've been privvy to some drooling in my day. I've seen it. Hopefully, being a good husband makes other men look like what they are: something one sees. An image.

It's liberation! The dogmatic way things were are no more. It's pathetic really, the way guys drool after women. And from my high-horse, I can trot right on by.

Christmas Present For Me

The Biggest Kidder

Penny's written that she doesn't feel grown up. Doesn't feel qualified to talk to a bunch of yahoo's about art and making it a carreer. Who's she kidding!

If Penny is a kid now, then she was a grownup back in the day. [Atleast she never had a problem putting on a display as a kid.] Think back to the time she chased Jerry the street. He was on a bike and he couldn't even get away! Her baseball bat hit his seat about 10 times before she stopped running. Think to another time when I was cornered on a playground after school by these two bullies, Nate and Ted (if that was the second's name). She came running into the pete-rock so fast, you could see sprays behind her. She laid waste to them. Then think about snipe-hunting in a graveyard in a small Wisconsin town. She wasn't scared when she popped out from behind the grave and screamed at my friends and me.

In fact, the only time she's been kid-like was when she made her first cookies. She put 3 or 4 tablespoons vice 3/4 teaspoons of salt in these wretched cookies. I can still taste it to this day. I'd never want to be a cow. I'd hate licking salt blocks. I shutter at salt.

Anyways, seems like (1) she's being overdramatic as usual or (2) she's forgotten that being a monster has nothing to do with appearances. Being a monster has everything to do with believing you're one (and scaring kids in graveyards never hurts). Being an adult, a professional, or an artist has to ride on the same theory. It helps to hold a paintbrush, but all being an artist is boils down to one thing: believing it yourself.