I am currently writing on the patio of our new apartment with the newest addition to our family chewing my big toe. It has been a long year since I’ve moved to Washington state and I have just now started to find the time to write and tap into my creativity again. In the past year, the bar I work at shut down for a few months and then re-opened, we moved into our own apartment, I started taking clients for personal training and also became a certified nutrition specialist. Bu

Two months ago, I packed my entire life up into my Honda Civic and drove across the country to finally close this damn distance between Taylor and I. I insisted to my mom, who came along for the ride so I wouldn’t get mugged or kidnapped, that I wanted to drive the entire way. I savored every mile that got me closer to him. Eating Doughnuts in Denver, CO I want to tell you that my road trip and these past two months have been nothing but amazing and a breeze…but that’s not wh

September 15th. That’s the date I want to finally close the gap between me and Taylor. Emotionally, it took me a very long time to get to that date. I knew from the beginning of our relationship that, if it ended up working out, I would have to leave behind my parents, my hometown and all the people I’ve known for the past 21 years to start a huge new chapter in my life and, honestly, I was absolutely horrified. This was more than just trying a new activity or a joining a clu

After T deployed, care packaging got a little more serious. The things I was sending before were, in all honesty, more for my enjoyment than his. It was stuff that he could’ve easily went to Walmart and just got himself.  That’s not really the case anymore seeing that hes on a sub these days. A lot of what you send and what they need depends on your sailor and what kind of craft they are on, what kinds of shifts they have and work they do. But I have learned from Taylor a few

Every deployment and situation is different. You may go through a deployment and have decent communication the whole way through or there could be periods of time where you haven’t received any kind of communication for weeks or maybe months. It would be an understatement to say that going with no emails or phone calls is hard. It’s hell. I had no idea if he was okay, I missed his voice, I missed telling him about my day and his advice, I missed hearing about his day and I ha

I’ve heard it at least three times since I came back from Hawaii…how silly or naive I am for being a military significant other. I started a new job at a bar to make a little extra cash and wore my new Navy hoodie I got in Hawaii. A man, who I had met one other time, asked me with enthusiasm who I knew in the Navy while I was counting some money. I piped up, excited and said, “My boyfriend!” and his expression instantly changed. The brightness vanished. He just replied with,

I felt really overwhelmed after Taylor left. It is my first time going through a deployment and I had no idea where to start as silly as that sounds. How am I going to survive all these months? What am I supposed to do to pass the time? How do I go back to “normal” life again? Break the time up into smaller chunks: The first thing I did was break the deployment up into fourths. I wrote down the date that we would be a quarter of the way through, half way through and three qua

It would be an understatement to tell you that Hawaii was beautiful. And the time that I spent with Taylor and his family was just as beautiful if not more. I went to Hawaii to visit T and to say my last goodbyes before he goes under the sea for a long period of time, the longest period of time that we will be apart thus far in our relationship. If you read my last post, “How to Travel to Hawaii for Cheap,” you know that we rented an Airbnb which, let me tell you, was a bless

For two years I have had more people than I can count ask me, “How do you do it?” And I have never had an answer. I didn’t really know how, I just did. But after two years of getting asked this question and then asking myself, “Yeah… how the hell do I do this?” on my car rides back home I have finally come up with the answer. So, here it goes. The three things that you need to have in order to be a military girlfriend: Genuine Love No, not the puppy love you have for Ryan Gos

Being that I was born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago, you would think that I would have already taken the three hour drive down to visit St. Louis, Missouri at least once in my life… Surprisingly, this is untrue. Me and T wanted to take some type of road trip while he was home on leave and my friend had told me that the St. Louis Zoo has a penguin tour where you can meet and pet the penguins. T’s favorite animal is a penguin so we easily settled for St. Louis as our roa

You’ve just spent this amazing few weeks with your SO filled with lots of love, companionship, laughter, fun-filled plans and parties. Then no sooner do they get back that you find yourself back at the airport waving goodbye with tear-soaked eyes and a snot-filled tissue in your non-waving hand. Then there is the drive home from the airport that you don’t really remember too much because of all the thinking you have done during that time. Then before you know it, you are stan

Military relationships are not Dear John. It’s not romantic. It’s not wonderful. When you ask a little girl where she sees herself one day, most likely, the answer will not be sleeping in a bed by herself while her husband is fighting a war and her kids are asking where daddy is. Most people already understand that so it’s no surprise that I often get asked the question, “Why would you ever put yourself through that?” I asked myself that same question when I first met Taylor.

There is no denying that distance is hard and I would be silly if I told you that I have found a way to deal with it completely. I haven’t. But I have found ways to bring comfort during those times when I feel like my heart is literally tearing in my chest, those nights that I toss and turn and can’t fall asleep. 1.Grow yourself a support system I think of my support system as a circle. The reasoning for that is because none of them come before the other and they are all ther

For two years now, Charleston has become my second home and it wasn’t too traumatic on my wallet most of the time. My airline tickets averaged around $300 and if I couldn’t do that I could drive. The next stop on our military journey, however, is going to be Hawaii, a trip that will most definitely not be too kind on the old wallet. But I have recently put in place some tips and tricks that will get me, stress-free, to Hawaii and back… I might even be able to afford a nice di

Taylor has been pretty grumpy lately (for good reason too) so I went last weekend for two days to cheer him up a bit. It was a normal morning when we woke up. We got up, took a shower, got dressed and went to Waffle House for breakfast. As we sat at Waffle House waiting for our food I asked, “Do you have tape at home?” “Tape? I don’t think so. What do you need tape for?” “Nothing. Never mind!” We ate breakfast and left. Taylor pulled up to his house to drop me off before he w

I hate my lower stomach. The “pooch” as some people call it. My upper stomach is flat and looks fine but my lower stomach…hell no. My arms are a little chunkier than I’d like. And I don’t like my love handles. They stick out when my yoga pants slip down a little too far or if I wear jean shorts. Sound familiar? In the past two years I lost around 15 pounds or so and I was happy but it wasn’t enough. Once I got hooked on fitness, I couldn’t stop. I’d sit for hours on Instagram

A few months ago, I became familiar with the idea of minimalism or the idea that we don’t need things to be happy. We only need what is essential to life to be happy. So, I purged out my room and got rid of 16 bags of things that just didn’t make me the slightest bit happy anymore or things I haven’t used in months. You can read more about my minimalism journey and how I found it beneficial to being a military SO in my article, “Minimalism and the Military Girlfriend.” This l

I hear all the stories. The ones where a sailor comes home and the house that once held his valuables, his life and his wife is now completely vacant. The girl who waited at home and kept the house and kids up and running for months at a time finds out her deployed husband cheated. I have even heard recently that women wait at ports to try and persuade military men into sleeping with them. *Shudders* I think we all have fears of being cheated on and these can especially be ma

My best friend at work bought tickets the other day for her and her boyfriend to fly round- trip to Denver, Colorado…for $50 each. That blew my mind. Fifty dollars?! Round trip?! That’s insane considering my flight tickets are always at least $200 a pop. So, I asked her how she did it. She used an app called "Hopper", an absolutely beautiful thing for MILSOS. First you create an account and then type in your starting location and where you’d like to go. After that this screen

Christmas was great and everything but what I really wanted was for it to be December 28th, particularly at 7am when Taylor’s plane would land. Like a kid on Christmas, I couldn’t sleep the night before and I got up at 5 am to go pick up my boy. And then finally, I got him. January 4th will mark one and a half years that we have officially been together so we decided to celebrate a little early. Our first date was at Friday’s and we drank mudslides so it seemed fitting to rel