Crack Salad

Outside there is all this lettus growing in the crack of my parents sidewalk. I asked my mom what all this maddess what about and she said she spilt some seeds and didn't want them to go to waste. So now we have sun burnt lettus. I am glad we could make such big sacrifices in this hard economy!

The Adventures of Fort Knox...

I decided I wanted to join the Army to pay for my education...and so I was a soldier/cadet for 30 days...The future is still to be decided based on the wonderful time I had at LTC (leadership training course) or some might call it hell!Everywhere I go...There's a Drill Sergeant there...Drill Sergeant, Drill Sergeant, why won't you leave me alone, I just want to go home! (A little cadence we used to sing) However, from the first step on Fort Knox soil until we left the airport to come home a Drill Sergeant was there yelling at you so you could get thick skin (I got thick skin but it was from dehydration not constant anger!)

First lets start off with a little patriotism... My dog sporting the American Flag

For 30 days we hurried up and waited, stood in formation at unearthly hours of the day, ran everywhere (to the bathroom, the water buffalo, from chow...), we used a lot of outhouses, showered in front of everyone, never had toilet paper, sweat, sweat sweat, swam in mud, crawled in thorns, got blasted with paint balls, chocked down food, drank out of the same dirty canteen every day, never slept and beat our faces (the push up).

The following is going to be long, but believe me...it was a long long month! Don't let these pictures for one second trick you into thinking we had nothing but fun. For someone deathly afraid of heights rock climbing, repelling and obstacle courses where pure stress. Paint balling is fun until you are the one being shot a hundred times while lying in a thistle patch! And in-processing...please, they dump your entire bag on the ground, take away everything you own that might represent civilization and give you thirty seconds to pack it back up and try and run out of site.

These are my roommate: Lemon and Starnes, the very people that gave me courage to last 30 days! (And didn't hate me for crying every night:)

This is where we lived:







Here are some pictures from the Patton Museum. It was very surreal to see the actual tanks and weapons used in war with the mud from the early 1900's still stuck in the treads. A lot of people sacrificed so much in such miserable accommodations for our freedom. For that I will never take this country for granite!












This was land navigation. Since I can't find things with my GPS shouting out specific instructions you can only imagine the wreck I was when they drop you off in the woods with just a compass and give you three hours to find every point and return. At one point I was so lost that when I finally saw another human I started bawling! And waiting for the latrine...it took like 20 minutes to remove enough gear to undo your pants, we tried to go in the woods as much as possible (but shhhh. don't tell)



One time I had to go to the bathroom so bad and they wouldn't let me until after a 40 minute bus ride on a vehicle with no shocks. Tears came out of my eyes that time too!

Below we have the weapon clearing barrel that you have to use before and after enter any firing range. Then the pull up bars. In the morning during PT they would make us do all sorts of crazy pull ups. Well as you can imagine, me doing a pull-up is impossible! They would yell and yell that we couldn't get down until all reps were complete. Well you can give me 15 seconds or 15 hours, it's not going to happen! Next we have the water buffalo that went with us everywhere. It was actually cold but the more you drink the more you have to pee and that's an inconvenience, so I just avoided it! The tree shown was one from a project one night that they gave us hours to hand pick every little green think that grew under the tree. It was the longest most monotonous night ever! Next is me wearing the hottest outfit ever. I was preparing for Call of the Wild in which we build all sorts of floating contraptions and raced them. And of course a Drill Sergeant getting ready to yell at us!

Friday the 7th First Sergeant made arrangements for the ice cream truck to come in. Drill Sergeant Purdy told us he had never seen the ice cream man before but he heard he did crack. Suspicion confirmed. He was in ripped up clothes, dirty van and had no idea what was going on. Hilarious!



The day before graduation was family day. I asked my family not to come because I didn't want to ride in a car for three days getting home. So I joined the Lemon family for the day. We ate lunch at Red Lobster and went to downtown Louisville to the bat making factory and did some miniature golf. I must say Louisville was a little more hard core/ white trash than I expected. I can say at one point I was honestly scared!





Last formation at the butt crack of dawn! Marching to chow so they could throw our trays one last time before we had a chance to eat.

Packing up to leave. We were so tired we learned to sleep anywhere through anything. Bombs and machine guns could be going off and my head would be bobbing in the corner! And finally my squad; squad five, we dominated everything. We had some interesting kids but that keeps things fresh.

I FINALLY made it home. So now what??? First order I got my hair done, wore a skirt (just because I could) put on double the make-up and packed up everything even remotely Army. I have a week to decide if this will be my forever future or if I will go back to student loans. No matter what I learned a lot, not just that I am a bawl baby but that I am strong enough to accomplish anything!