Tag Archives: United States Air Force

To My Baby Daughter, Caitlyn, On Her Birthday

Posted on by Standard 32

Today is my youngest child’s 21st birthday. Caitlyn is in the United States Air Force serving in Japan, so I’m missing one of her

Caitlyn — My precious baby daughter

milestones, and it bums me out to no end. But, thank God we have the kind of technology that allows me to converse with her without waiting weeks and weeks for snail mail.

I have often said that being a mother was my favorite job ever. All three of my kids are very different, presenting with strengths and weaknesses that I dealt with in each individually. But hands down, Caitlyn was just the easiest kid ever. Even her birthday is the easiest ever to remember — July 1.

From the minute she was born, it was clear that Caitie was no whiner. In fact, as I lied in pose on the delivery table, waiting to hear her cry, she had to be smacked on the butt twice before she let out a newborn wail, and it was over within seconds. Evidently, she was in agreement that her time had come. No wanting back in the womb for that kid. The world presented her with opportunities, and she wanted to seize every one of them.

When I got her home, she had two toddler siblings that required a lot of Mom‘s attention to compete with, yet she was always patient. She slept 6 hours in a row at night from day one. Of course, this was unnerving for me, so instead of capitalizing on the sleep time, I spent time hovering around her making sure she was breathing.

My eldest child was moody and stubborn, having to actually be taught how to have a sense of humor, and my second child skipped crawling altogether and launched into walking and then escaping from home in the wee hours of the morning, but Caitie completed every milestone a baby is supposed to accomplish normally and without causing my eyes to bleed. She learned to crawl and then walk by nine months, spoke words on time, and was so laid back I could literally take her anywhere with me without worry. She was, and is, a huge blessing to her tired mom.

Of all my kids, Caitie has been the one that has the most characteristics I recognize in myself. She has a hard time giving up; she is passionate about succeeding at whatever she sets her hand to do; she likes people in general; she strives to protect the weak, and isn’t afraid to stand up for what is right, even if she is the only one standing. She even has the angry streak that I’ve worked hard to control in myself all these years, and already, she maintains self-control better than I do.

What Caitie possesses, though, that I don’t is a comfortable acceptance of herself. She likes who she is, and feels no need to explain

why. I’ve not met anyone yet who doesn’t instantly fall in love with this girl, and that list includes me. The minute I looked into the eyes of that baby with the old soul, I was hooked forever.

I have a lot of funny stories about Bekkie and Dj, but not so many about Caitie. It isn’t because she was not fun or wasn’t silly, or that I wasn’t paying attention. And she makes me laugh until I pee myself on a regular basis.  It is because she was always smart about most of her decisions. She didn’t get roped into a lot of stupid stuff, and was not in the least influenced by peer pressure, whether at school or at home. She approached Bekkie and Dj’s teen angst with the same practical nature I did. She had no use for it. But don’t be fooled. She is gifted at bringing laughter into a room, and to be loved by Caitie is to be loved by the best this world has to offer.

Dearest Caitlyn,

I miss you so very much, my heart feels like it will break if I don’t hug and kiss that little face soon. It has been a hard year for your dad and me, but one thing that has never waivered…we both love you with all of our hearts. I think God had you safely tucked away in Japan while we went through this because your heart would have been in as much danger as mine had you been here to witness the attacks satan has launched. You are a fixer, like me, and it would have been torture for you to stay out of it.

But, like you, I’m a tough nut to crack, and all of this will sort itself out in the end. I already see some cracks of sunlight in the situation. Please focus on getting physically healthy. I honestly think that you have anemia like me, but I am glad they are being extensive about diagnosing what is going on with your blood. In the meantime, be sure to eat healthy and take the vitamins they prescribe. And don’t drink a lot. Booze zaps your body of vitamins and makes you blog stupid stuff.   :-)

I am so blessed God gave you to me!!!

I hope you have a wonderful birthday, and at least we are only a few short months off from you coming home to see your family.

I LOVE YOU!!

Always,

Mom

The Adams Family? Amateurs!!

Posted on by Standard 26

Today, I woke up really, really happy. I have the weirdest family, and yet we function so well together, there is no way I would change a single thing about it.

Chef has this routine with me where he wakes up somewhere in the vicinity of 5am and has me fix him a cup of coffee so he can get some stuff done before he goes to work. I always get up, prepare his coffee just the way he likes it, bring it to him in bed, and gently let him know it is sitting on his night stand. 4 hours later, when I wake up again, the full cup of coffee, cold and sporting a thin skin of nastiness, is sitting right there where I left it!

I touched base with my dad yesterday, since I had missed his last phone call, and turns out, he’s been in jail for the last couple of days. Unpaid traffic tickets. He wanted to let me know he had to sell the my son’s car so he could get them paid… :-) Dj, the coolest grandson in the world, didn’t care and just said that he was glad he could help him out, and he’d just get a different car. Dad was all worked up because the big, fat guy that he shared a holding cell with slept a day and a half straight, snoring so loud, Dad couldn’t get any rest. When the guy finally woke up, he told my dad that it was his wife of 8 year’s birthday, and he was upset about missing it.

Dad: Don’t be. Best gift you could have given her..I’ll bet she hasn’t slept in 8 years.

Rebekkah, in her quest to get over the guy she thinks she is in love with, has turned off her cell phone and is in a quest to find a carrier that does not offer text messaging…his preferred form of communication with her. I am supposed to be finding that kind of carrier, and until then, she won’t carry a cell phone.

Caitlyn, who is in the Air Force stationed in Japan, and who I use Facebook to communicate with weekly left this message on her FB page almost a week ago:

 

 

“After what I just saw, I don’t think I will be able to comfortably sleep for a long, long time.”

There doesn’t seem to have been any other activity since then, and I’m dying of curiosity, which will turn to panic in about 2 more days if I don’t hear from her.

DJ finally got a really great job. It is a welding job, which is his favorite kind, and it pays well. Only problem is that it is located all the way across town, and his grandfather sold his car.

I wouldn’t trade this family for all the money and riches in the world!!

– Bird

 

Survey Says

Posted on by Aside 3

Today I took a ‘random’ survey sent out by PACAF (Pacific Air Force for those of you who don’t know). It was about my training and what we could do to improve upon it. I answered the questions to the best of my ability and finally came to the last section: ‘If you would like to make a suggestion or have any further comments please write them in the area below.’

Oh, ok. I can do that. There are many improvements to be made, and I will certainly help you out. Don’t worry,

Caitie travelling alone...

Air Command, I got you.

I started with basics about what we learned in tech school and what we actually use. A lot of the stuff we learned is obsolete and most of our leadership doesn’t understand my job anyway. Our CDCs looked like they scraped up enough information to get by with rather than creating an actual form of guidance for us to reference. Our on the job training was the only actual instruction we receive. But it wasn’t good enough to stop there. There were parts of my career that don’t make sense in certain squadrons, better bring that up too. And while we’re at it we should probably throw something in there about people full-heartedly believing that we are magicians and can drop everything to look at their computer because it will ‘just take a second’. Bitch, Work. Do you go to it?

I spent a good hour and half typing, spell checking and re-reading my ‘suggestions’. It flowed gracefully. It lacked most of my sass and came across professional. I was quite proud of it. After my sixth or seventh read through I decided this was as good as it was going to get.

That is when the fateful moment came to hit ‘submit’.

Then I got a wonderful little error message that read: “your comment exceeds 200 characters in length.”

What? CHARACTERS? Not 200 words (this was about 600 words). 200 CHARACTERS. That means punctuation and spaces are being counted.

You mean to tell me that you just let me type a damn essay into your stupid little comment box and didn’t warn me that there was a limit? You know what Air Force, you’re a bastard. You don’t care what I have to say. You don’t want instruction on how to improve. What you want is a standardized ass-kiss annually. That isn’t my game. I don’t play that shit.

I deleted my beautiful work and replaced it with this: “Stop wasting valuable time with surveys. I’m an airman who does 9 different programs with no help because you can’t decide what my job is. I’d love to chat, but as I said, I need to get back to work. Must be nice to have an automated system do it for me.”

Most of my ire died out after lunch, but its a damn shame that I couldn’t send that in. Oh well, cei la vie.

-Bug

Haterade

Posted on by Standard 6

The last two years in the military have taught me a few things. 1) Cuss words are just sentence enhancers… they aren’t necessary, but they do emphasize the emotions in which you wish to convey. 2) You won’t always like your bosses and sometimes quitting isn’t an option. And 3) I really dislike military dependents. If you don’t know what a dependent is, its basically a human leech that affixes itself to a military member and then projects an almost admirable sense of self entitlement.

This post is about that last one. Yesterday, while minding my own business, I decided to go running after work.

 

Little did I know that on this day my track would be inhabited by all of the dependopotamus’, but their spawns as well. Apparently they were having an ‘Eggstraviganza’ for Easter and had reserved the bottom floor of the Weasel’s den for the evening.

No big deal, I’m headed to the second floor and am only passing through. Or so I thought. Apparently this was an Airman Volunteer Opportunity and probably the bitchiest woman I have ever encountered in my life stopped me on my way through the throng of children. “I thought I told you to put more Gatorade out of the spouses while they were running. Why is this table empty?” I know this face, this woman is the wife of an officer in OG.

“Excuse me?” The look on my face could wilt flowers.

This is the natural cycle.

“Did I stutter? Should I go talk to your Commander?” I would have thrown down right there, but lets be honest, if this woman sat on me I’d probably break. She has at least 200 lbs on me, for whatever reason once these women get married they give up on fitness and start gaining weight like its a personal goal.

“Ma’am, I’m on my way to the track. I don’t work here.” Good girl. Stay nice.

“I don’t care who your are. Do you know who I am? Go get the spouses Gatorade.”

My dad will like this one, ” I’d like to, I wanted to, in fact, I almost did… but then… you asked.” I side stepped the Gorgon and kept on my merry way.

“Don’t you walk away from me! I want your name and rank right now!” She looked like trying to keep up with my light gait was the most exercise she had done since the 90s.

nuff said.

It was this moment where MY Commander saw this woman chasing after me and asked me what was going on. Before I could reply, the woman started in on how disrespectful I was being etc.etc. She was shushed and then she asked me again what was going on. “Sorry Lt Col Jost, I was headed to the track to time my run when this lady stopped me accusing me of not following her orders, then demanded, even though I’m not volunteering at this function, to set up refreshments. I don’t even know where to get what she is asking for and I have places to be after I leave here.”

This moment will live in my memory as a glorious moment in life. “Its a good thing you are my airman, in my squadron, and under my command. Its nice to see that you are taking your PT seriously. I’m sorry that happened to you. Please, go ahead. You don’t have to be here.”

The woman looked like my Commander slapped her in the face. But since my Lt Col out ranks her Maj husband she couldn’t say a damn thing.

And so ends the story. I would like to say not all dependents are like that, because truly not all of them are, but a lot of them are. In 4 years I hope to see less of them… but for now its unavoidable. I feel bad for the poor saps who married these monsters.

-Bug

The Exceptionally Long Road To Fitness

Posted on by Standard 1

I’m in the military. Being fit is only optional if you don’t care if they throw you out. Seeing as that isn’t the way I want to go out (I pictured something more like ‘A1C dies surfing a tsunami on a 2X4), I have to conform. That’s not a strong point of mine.

Throughout life I have made a habit of doing the opposite of what the crowd did. I joined ROTC when everyone was joining team sports and FAA or Key Club, I created a semi-racist club just because I got bored at a predominantly black school, etc.etc.  And that made people blindly follow me. This is how I came to the conclusion that joining the military was a good idea for me. It made no nevermind that I had never in my life done a sport of any kind, and therefore was incredibly out of shape. This would haunt me for the rest of my career.

Basic only marginally helped me get a little better. I am an incredible klutz,  on week 6 of basic I tore a ligament in my right ankle. Needless to say this didn’t help my already suffering physique.  Tech school PT was a joke. I wasn’t the slowest person out there, therefore, I assumed I was doing fine. Then the real air force happened. No scheduled PT time meant I wasn’t going. Not going led to eating bad because, hey, I just got out of basic, I can afford it. Well… you can’t afford it for 2 years.

Recently I started to feel everything around me spinning out of control. My job was stressing me out, my health was deteriorating and my lack of exercise had nothing to do with it. On top of that I had recently failed a PT test and leadership was coming down hard on me. I felt helpless.

That’s when I started dating Levi. He made me feel better about everything going on, not placating to my bad moods but making me do things to relieve stress. Namely: Running.Having someone to look good for will make you do things that normally you wouldn’t do. As I’m sure everyone can relate to. I mean, who ENJOYS diet and exercise? No one. I want chocolate cake everyday but I know that doesn’t fit with the image I have in my head. So to the track I went with an iPod and bad attitude.

At first it sucked horribly. I hate running. I am terrible at it. But damn if don’t feel great afterwards. He gave me something to control in my crazy life. My new PT schedule was getting noticed and leadership started to lay off me. I had a blood transfusion and I started getting faster. It was actually nice to think you can do better, know you can do better, and then do your best. It was painful but at the end of the day you know you did something.

Then something amazing happened. I started noticing muscle tone. My goals shifted from just running because I could control it, to running because it was good for me and made my outside look as good as I felt inside. No dietary supplements or quick fixes, just natural exercises.

Motivation is a key element, and knowing you are your own worst enemy in that field is also important. It isn’t easy, but since when is anything that is good for you easy? That isn’t how life works.

If I can do that anyone can. Unless you’re like my sister who has been smoking for 10 years and apparently has earned the right to 1) Never run and 2) Smoke inside. I will concede that point.

-Bug