I want to move

We have got to get away. We, as a family, need to get off this post for a few days and take a mini-vacation.

Can I just say that I hate, hate, hate the way Fort Hood family housing is set up? In Georgia, the house we were in was a duplex, but the bedrooms were conveniently located at opposite ends of the building. That meant that our kitchens were opposite one another, but who cares about cooking noises? Why on Earth would any contractor think it's a good idea to put master bedrooms back to back in any housing....ESPECIALLY military housing. Not only do the soldiers have crazy hours and could be coming or going at any time of the night, but when R&R rolls around during deployments or when a couple has been separated for any length of time, it is pretty much a given that there will be frequent "intimate" encounters!! Some people don't care that the neighbors can hear them. I've got a neighbor two doors down, with whom I was discussing this very issue and she laughed and said, "Honey, if you're concentrating on being quiet, then you're concentrating on the WRONG thing!"
Ok, granted, she has a point, but I am VERY, VERY conservative. I still blush when talking about sex and things of the like. I still can't watch movies with sex scenes in them without blushing. Maybe that's why I like scary movies so much. When I was growing up, this was a topic that was avoided at all costs. It was actually detrimental to my personal development how uncomfortable my mother was when it came to these topics. For example, when I started my period I was 12 years old. I, honestly, thought that I had pooped my pants without knowing it. I know that's gross and I'm sorry, but I'm just trying to make a point here. So, in my naivety (sp?), I took off my underwear and carried them in to my mother and asked her if that was poop, cause I couldn't figure out how I could have done that without knowing. She looked at me with pure disgust and screamed at me to just throw those nasty things away and never said anything else about it. She was in one of her scary moods so I just did what she said. After that I called my best friend, she told her mom and her mom got on the phone with me and told me what seemed to have happened. I wonder, looking back, if all my friends' parents actually knew what hell my home life was like? So, the next day Shannon (my BFF back then) brought me all that I needed and showed me what to do in the bathroom. I often internally reference things that went on in my childhood so I do not repeat those same things with my kids.
Anyway, sex isn't even the reason for this post so I got off topic from the get go. The reason for this post is that Olivia was up crying ALL NIGHT last night. I just about lost my mind! Nick and I had a huge fight because we were both tired and neither one of us had the common sense to stop and say, "ok, we're tired, let's just work together." I knew I had to get up at 5AM to get the boys off to school and Nick had to be at work at 7AM and when 2 AM rolled around and she was still screaming we were just at our wits ends! Nick finally just put her in her bed around 3AM and just let her wail it out. I don't even know what the problem was! I knew early on that it was going to be a weird night because she didn't get much of a nap yesterday. Isn't that weird? When Olivia misses her nap, rather than falling asleep early and staying asleep all night, she falls asleep early and wakes up around 11PM ready to play. I think her little body interprets the early bedtime as her nap and then everything goes to hell. The reason I mentioned family housing earlier is that I am one of those rare individuals that actually cares that my neighbors get some sleep. Hell, they've got three kids too and they both work and I always feel awful when she is up crying all night. It wouldn't be so bad if her crying spells were few and far between, but she is the most difficult child I have ever been around when it comes to sleeping. She's up at least 3 nights a week. It's not always like last night, but she always wakes up somewhere between 2 and 4 in the morning and screams for at least 15-20 minutes before I can get her back to sleep. I just feel sorry for my neighbors, that's all. They always tell me that they don't hear her, but I know that isn't true because I can hear them sometimes when they're just talking in normal voices. I can't understand what they're saying, of course, but I can hear their murmurs. I don't know. I just hope this passes soon. On top of everything else, I know they can hear me and Nick arguing and that's totally embarrassing. Nick and I love each other and already this morning we have both apologized and talked about how we were just exhausted and said things we didn't mean, but the neighbors don't hear that part, they just hear the angry things. I just hate this part of housing....there's no privacy whatsoever. The other day I was raking my back yard and my dog kept barking and staring up at my other neighbor's upstairs windows. I have a very smart dog and she is very protective of us so I know that she was barking at the neighbor that I have that I call "the peeper." You know, the ones that never come outside, but live their lives through the blinds in their windows. I hate that. If she wants to be involved in what I'm doing in my yard, then by all means, grab a rake and come give me a hand. Maybe we could be friends. Instead, she just watches from the safety of her window. GRRR. Things like that lead only to problems because then they just make assumptions. For example (I've got lots of examples this post!), I've had pest control come out four times in the last month and a half for fire ants in my yard. Olivia plays a lot in the back yard and last week she sat down in a new mound that I hadn't noticed and her poor little hand was bitten/stung at least ten times. She had those little blisters all over so I called pest control for the fourth time. When he came (same guy every time) I laughed and told him not to come through the house to the back yard, but we needed to walk around from the front because people were gonna start rumors over as much as he's been here! It's crazy, right? Unfortunately, those are things you have to think about in military housing. Ok, I've totally lost my steam to write anymore and I've been all over the place....guess I need a nap - like that's actually gonna happen. I'll chat more later!!