one year into police life

Alright, alright. I'm ready to come back to blog land. It's been a nice break. Do you want to know the real reason I haven't been blogging? The 18 month old is into everything, the 4 year old, like the t-shirt says, is hungry ALL THE TIME, and the 7 year old has just begun this odd phase of thinking there are germs and bugs in her food and water and I actually have a picture to prove it! Please tell me this is a phase and she's not going to be like Bill Murray in What About Bob?

What else have I been doing? I planted 6 boxes of strawberries on our balcony. Our co-op garden is huge. It's in a friend's backyard. They are a family of 6, our family of 5, and one other couple. We had a lot of success last year so we are doing it again this year. Right now we have spinach, broccoli, peas, lettuce, and one other thing I can't remember. That has already been planted. Next we will be planting our tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, yellow squash, peppers, carrots and herbs. I am really looking forward to it. We also have a strawberry patch there, but we decided to do our own as well since you can never have enough strawberries.

I've been reading, reading, and reading. I've also been watching a lot of movies and tv shows. Anything to occupy my mind from other stresses such as cleaning my house. And let me tell ya, it is a major pig sty right now. The other night HF came running down the stairs in a hurry to get out the door to work, and he kept tripping and stumbling over the messes in the living room. He looked at me in disbelief (since I'm usually quite OCD about cleaning) and I said, "what are you looking at?" It's so overwhelming I don't even know where to begin to clean. To aid in avoiding my household duties, I spent the entire day outside with a bunch of ladies in the neighborhood, some with kids and others single. It was a blast. We let the kids play while we looked at smutty gossip magazines like US weekly, and I got a sunburn! I have a purplish hue to my skin. That's how sunburned I got. And after dinner yesterday, the kids and I headed to a dia de los ninos fiesta and enjoyed some dancing and crafts. I have so far successfully avoided all household responsibilites for 3 days now.

This week marked the one year anniversary that HF began FTO. He also had another shift change this week. We are back to 10 pm to 6 am. Much better than the 7 pm to 3 am. He didn't get home until 5 or 6 anyway on that shift. This morning he didn't get home until 8 because he went out to breakfast with friends. Then I kept him up for another couple of hours after that. He also has some out of state training coming up, a new R.A.D. class he'll be teaching soon, and 2 full days of weapons training this week. Do you want to know the real reason I love 10p-6a? Get this. HF comes home in the morning and stays up. He'll make breakfast for the kids and get their clothes ready. He'll also get the treadmill ready. Then at 7:30 he'll wake us all up, he'll feed the kids and keep them out of my hair so I can work out. Then from 8-8:15 we'll have family scripture study, and then he takes daughter to school. I get showered, he gets home and goes to bed by 8:30 and voila! Day is off to a perfect start. But this only works in theory. He has to be home by 7 am or so. But you get the picture. Also, this kind of helpfulness kind of makes up for a lot of the sacrifices I make each day with the unpredictability of his work. I'm not always happy, but I have come a long way from being the dependent and needy gal I once was. We have also gone out on a couple of dates recently. And hopefully we can continue to do so on this shift.

HF is still doing really well. He still gets teased a lot by the other officers, he gets lots of compliments too. He's made a lot of good friends, he's had to buy a lot of gear. I no longer enjoy driving with him. I think he is the worst driver ever. Sorry HF if you're reading this. CCW sums it up just about right in this post. I'm assuming that it is another one of those rookie things. Fingers crossed. We continue to transition pretty smoothly for the most part into police life. We still fight about the same things. Mostly time management issues. I want him to stop sleeping, he wants to keep sleeping, etc. He will try and cheer me up by wearing his shoulder holster around the house-Bruce Willis style. I try not to show it, but it almost works! I will have more stories and updates next post. For those of you who still think about CJ, she is up to the same ol' same ol'. Still updating her facebook status that she is still working as a cop and will be promoting to investigations soon.

So that about sums everything up.