Hey everybody,
Recently a friend reached out and wanted to start a blog with me and this blog is more about my personal life so Skipper Sunday has moved! If you want to keep up with my happenings I will post a link each week to the other blog OR you can follow the link I will provide and throw a cool little follow our way!
Thanks for reading!
Mackenzie
In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Nightmares.”
Describe a nightmare? Really? Challenge me please! I’m begging you!
A nightmare. Skipper walks away boards a ship, a plane, a train. It always changes. He boards this method of transportation without hearing I love you come tumbling past my lips.
I was late. I missed goodbye and the look in his eyes haunt me even when I am awake.
The look of pain, the look of resentment.
Resentment. The nightmare that always follows me. The one I would happily never see again.
It’s a nightmare I hope stays only a dream.
So Since Hal has decided that he doesn’t want his name to be after an army officer I have been tasked with changing his name. Actually he came up with it I just wanted to be dramatic. He also takes up to much room on my Friday posts so he’s been moved to Sunday and his name is Skipper. See what I did there? Cute right?
Anyway my little Skipper is skipping off to Victoria on Wednesday. That still seems a little surreal to be honest. I mean yes, it has hit me that he is in fact leaving. I just don’t like that it is real. It’s been hard. It still doesn’t feel like enough and I don’t think any amount of time with him will ever be. Skipper and I have been inseparable lately. I spent a little bit of time with him on the weekend. We did what we loved to do and we just got to be with each other and visited his family and it was great. It was the best way to spend a holiday weekend. But that doesn’t make it any easier to say goodbye. 
I know it’s only 2 months and I’ll have lots to do to keep me busy but it is still 2 months full of things that I would want to do with him. But the training will make him happy and that is really all that matters I suppose. He will love his time there and that is what is important. I will miss him and I really hope a small part of him misses me a little. That is really the only thing I ever worry about. I know its silly and it is only 2 months but it still sneaks in there every now and again.
Don’t get me wrong saying goodbye and knowing its coming is horrible some times. Its intense and it is NOT all “lets spend all this time cuddling and being cute together” I mean there is a lot of that but I have a job and he has other people to see.
Sadly, that does sometimes mean I’m the one sitting at home alone on my bed with a giant box of chocolate and another full of kleenex while watching the notebook for the 8 millionth time feeling sorry for myself. Other times its full of “please for the love of god stop talking about how exciting it will be out there” or my personal favourite. “I wonder if I sit here long enough looking at him with sad puppy eyes he’ll stay.”. Yea that doesn’t work. Also, hiding things does not work either. At least not in a dorm room. He will find it so… I guess this is it though. I am inside 72 hours now and that’s really all there is to say.
So I know that I won’t have time tomorrow to post something so me being all sneaky and organized I’m going to post it today! Eat that time management!
This week (since last Thursday) has been a hurricane of emotions. Work is great it really is. I am doing the things that I enjoy and the 8 hour days don’t seem that long. I am lucky to have the job I do. There wasn’t to much that happened this week. Kinda the same as last week. I take a lot of pictures, type up all the rather dry bits of information that are important but make me want to cry sometimes. I almost had a post I’ve written up on our social media but I missed the mark. Again. So I am going to completely re-write it. But at the very least it is experience. Which in the long run my friends, is invaluable. And the people I work with make it all the better. The sales guys are fantastic and unbelievably helpful when I ask a billion questions about 12 different trailers. No, this is not a huge promotion. I actually really appreciate the fact that they know the trailers so well because I sure as hell don’t. But with the amount of information I type up on a daily basis I may soon know more than them! I am thankful for how steady and distracting work can be. My boy, lets call him… … … Hal. After Hal Moore. Its a movie reference. If you want to check it out that would be pretty cool. Its this awesome movie at the Americans in Vietnam and the mission that actually used the call broken arrow. All of my military will be explained in the movie, We Were Soldiers.
Anyway! He is heading off to BC soon for training and well RMC is very busy right now with graduation. Even though Hal is only in 3rd year he is required to help out a lot. This on top of my job on top of him getting ready to leave means that I don’t get to see him much or really hear from him. That is really hard. I only have 12 days left with him in the same time zone as me and I want to use all the time I can to see him and make the memories that will be my companion while he is gone. I love him and I know this is what he wants and it will make him happy to leave and to be in BC but that doesn’t mean it will be any easier for me. On my way to work I drive by RMC. It is a beautiful school, especially this time of year. Graduation for them is a huge deal and rightfully so it is a huge commitment. The flags are up and the grass is mowed and it scares me. I have one year exactly before my whole world changes. Its a weird feeling. It calms me that he has to come back to finish school but at the same time I only have one year. 365 days and by the time he gets home it will be less than 300. Less than 300. That isn’t a lot when you think about it.
Dating him is hard. I love him very much but it isn’t easy. You have to be your own person because they will cancel plans when you really count on them to be there. It hurts and you want so desperately to be mad but you can’t because at the end of the day its not their fault either. They eventually make it up to you but its all time and dating military you don’t have the luxury of time. But you grow together and you get stronger and the cancelled plans soon roll of your back because they will always happen. The ever looming goodbye is hard and it will be hard but I will get through it because what other choice do I have right? Anyway congrats to the Class of 2015. You guys did it. You made it.
So the finding time to blog bit is a heck of a lot harder than it sounds! You’d think typing out a couple hundred words and having it posted in a timely manner would not be that awfully challenging but between a full time job, a boyfriend who will shortly be disappearing for Navy training and a boat load (yea that was on purpose) of friends who have arrived home from various universities, it has made free time hard to find.
The first week at this job was interesting. I have never been that much of a camper and when I did go I always stayed in a tent. I can blow up an air mattress and unzip a sleeping back like you wouldn’t believe, but put me in a travel trailer and it all goes for shit.
Last week the big thing that I learned how to do is take one of those heavy and stupidly awkward dinning tables and turn it into a bed. Now, this took A LOT of practice. And when I say A LOT I mean like 16 tables later and I still slam them into my shins. (yes, I have the bruises to prove it.) That usually is the most exciting part of my day. I spend a ridiculous amount of time sitting at a desk sending emails containing a crap ton of photos to a web designer and entering all the little details about trailer weight online. Also, the phone literally never stops ringing.
Many of you may not know this about me but I am prone to breaking myself. So I was going to punch out for lunch and sure enough the door came flying open and my hand happened to be in the wrong spot and well I have yet again sprained my hand. That happened on Thursday. My third day on the job… It all added up to being a very interesting week.
The transition hasn’t been easy though. Especially with the whole boyfriend leaving soon, work taking up prime visitation hours thing. It was a rough week. I realized just how much I a) talk to him and b) miss him already. We didn’t get a lot of time to talk especially during the latter half of the week due to many many things. I’m not going to lie, it effected us. Between feeling left out and wanting to simply say goodnight the stress levels seemed to never end. It uh its going to take some serious getting use to but at least at the end of the day, it makes me appreciate all that he does for me that much more.
Friday I finally finished up my first year of college.
So obviously I am very stoked. Finally I can sleep in, binge watch Netflix and not feel guilty about it later, did I mention sleep in? But at the same time I will miss it. I am lucky to have been hired to do full time work in my field right after first year but I will definitely miss going to class and being as crazy busy as I was. This summer will be forcing me to grown and mature a lot.
This year has taught me so so so much. Yes, school and the formal learning taught me a lot like it was suppose to do. But I learned so much more about myself.
This year I met a boy who tests me in ways nobody ever has. I would imagine any girl who falls head over heals for anyone in the military can relate to what I’m saying. It’s HARD. The uniforms are wonderful but at the end of the day they have to leave when they are told to. Yes that also means that you could be sitting in a movie theater and all of a sudden an email comes in and he has to go back to base or school or where ever he is told to.
It hurts sometimes and all you want to be mad but you can’t because you in a way signed up for that too. I got lucky though. I get to love a man who is better than the best and who treats me better than anyone ever could even when those dreaded emails arrive or another training course takes him away.
On top of worrying and occasional stress surrounding the Boyfriend, school has always been a very important part of my life and in college that equals stress!
Between annoying unmotivated group memebers, ever changing work schedules, and the endless list of demanding projects and deadlines, the stress was huge and mounting. The work never really seemed to end. Blood, (yes, blood. paper cuts are NOT fun) sweat and so many tears seemed to be poured all over the year.
Thankfully the hard work has started to pay off and I start my first full time job on Tuesday. So as I am starting a new chapter in my work life; I am now going to start a new section of my blog dedicated to my experiences this summer and into the next school year!
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Thanks to current events the Canadian Military has once again taken a for front in the news. Before I say anymore I send my condolences to the friends and family of Sgt. Andrew Joseph Doiron. Your lost will not be forgotten.
I first learned of this terrible accident while with my boyfriend normally the passing wouldn’t have hit me as hard as it had but he (my boyfriend) is a cadet at the Royal Military College of Canada. We haven’t been together very long at all but even in the short months I’ve known him it seems my sensitivity to all things military have been heightened. We were still just seeing each other during the shooting in Ottawa and as much as I will never forget that day because of the terrible event that unfolded, there is one thing that will forever be burned into my young brain; the way my boyfriend reacted. He was ready to do whatever it took to protect his family and me; a silly first year student at a public college who he had met less than a month before.
Military members are a different type of person. The sheep dog analogy is often used and it is very accurate. They are protectors through and through. That is always something I have admired about him and the rest of the military; their never ending dedication to our beautiful country and everyone who lives in it even though they will never know the vast majority of the people they defend on a daily basis.
The new recruiting ad released by Forces Canada does a beautiful job of embodying this spirit. The spot is full of passion, adventure, strength, pride, courage, danger, compassion and all the rest of the ideals that should be in a military recruiting ad regardless of what country it airs in.
But there is something special and different about the Canadian Military. This ad paints that difference so clearly you’d thing you were looking through the ice on a northern Canadian lake. They’re humble. At the end of the spot the narrator/voice of every military member I know says it. “We are the Canadian Armed Forces. That’s our job.” There is no ego stroke in that. It wasn’t said to make us sound better as a nation. It was simply said because at the end of the day these are still Canadian men and women doing what they do best; serving Canada proudly while still doing what we all do best; remaining humble.
Marketing and Me 