Rob's Stories: The Days of Camel Spiders & Roses

I wanted to share with you a story that Rob shared with me a few days ago.

As most of you know, Rob spent October of 2006-November 2007 (with a little break in June) in Iraq as a combat infantryman.  He has an infinitesimal amount of stories that are far too inappropriate to share in this blog or with most other humans, but this one should be tame enough provided you aren't too much of an arachnophobe.

One night Rob was getting ready to relieve a comrade from tower guard duty, which basically was comprised of standing in a tower at night and making sure nothing fishy happened down below.  As he was taking over his shift, he noticed that his fellow soldier was particularly eager to leave.

The other soldier said, "There's a camel spider in here. I've been hunting it but I can't find it," and left.

For those of you who don't know, this is what a camel spider looks like. Warning: scary gross spider picture.*

Rob began his tower guard shift--which lasted several hours--backed up against a corner of the tower with his night-vision goggles set to close-range instead of long-range, which is where they in theory should have been due to the fact that he was guarding from a tower.  
He periodically saw the camel spider on the ceiling, but as he says, "It's hard to commit to swinging at something that's above your head. You run the risk of it bouncing and losing sight of it, or having it land on your face. I really wanted to shoot it."
Every time he'd see the camel spider he'd note the location and look away.  When he'd look again at the same spot, the camel spider would've disappeared.  Camel spiders, it should be noted, can reach up to 10mph at short distances.
Rob spent the entire guard shift on edge waiting for the camel spider to resurface once again (I'd like to interject at this point that this is a man who survived several IEDs, many firefights, and a bullet ricochet into his arm).  
When another soldier came to relieve him, Rob said, "There's a camel spider in here, and it fucking teleports," and left.
In case you were wondering what actually happens in a war zone where a bunch of a men are cooped up together for long periods of time, from what I can tell, it's largely stuff like this.
*Interesting fact that I'm sure will put you at ease: camel spiders are arachnids but are not actually spiders.  So you know, sleep well tonight. Suffice it to say Rob and his battle-hardened comrades were terrified of these little sonsofbitches, except for his best friend Trent who is petrified of birds but can handle horrifying monsters with no problem. Also, if you're like me, this photo will cause you to see scary spiders out of the corner of your eye all day, and for that I apologize.

Guest Post: Danielle's Awesome Family Christmas Tradition

While Rob and I are on vacation in Florida I thought I'd share some awesome blog writers with you.  This is my first guest post extravaganza so I hope you enjoy!  Today's post is from Danielle of Little Spindle!  Danielle emailed me awhile back to talk about our mutual "I love a military man" experience.  She and her blog are lovely, and I adore the story she's shared with you below.  Thanks Danielle!

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Hello To Make Love Stay readers! I'm so excited to be here today and hope that you'll come visit me at Little Spindle sometime :)

Caitlin asked me to write something holiday related and after thinking about it for awhile I decided to share the strangest (and probably most long lasting) family tradition that I could think of.

OK, so the story starts 52 Christmas Eves ago with this woman:

Gram

Picture it!

It's Christmas Eve and the family has just finished a big dinner around a beautiful dining room table at my great aunt and uncle's house, who my grandmother is staying with while my grandfather is away in the Army. She is 8 months pregnant with my mom at this point, but Gram has always been quite the prankster. But apparently the joke's on her this time because later in the evening while the family is opening gifts Gram is presented with a beautifully wrapped package and she can't wait to tear into it.

But to what do her wandering eyes appear?! Take a guess...you'll never get it!

Remember how the family had just finished a beautiful holiday feast? Well, apparently after the meal someone took it upon themselves to completely clean the turkey carcass (with bleach and everything) and wrap it up for my grandmother to open. Please, take a moment and imagine receiving what's pictured below wrapped beautifully on Christmas Eve 1959.

Ok, so that'd be a pretty strange story - if it ended there...but of course, because my family is insane, it's far from over!

Gram received this darn thing wrapped up beautifully three more times in the next two days. They all traveled from house to house visiting all of the cousins and every.single.time they sat down to open gifts, there is was AGAIN!!!

How is this silly story a family tradition you're probably asking?

Ever since, every few years the carcass (which has 1959 written on it) resurfaces, wrapped as a gift and passed to a different member of the family. The trick is, when you pass it along to the next person you have to do it on the sly. Two years ago when my mom turned 50 (the turkey's 50th anniversary) someone placed a "gift" into the backseat of my parent's locked vehicle during a family Christmas party and later on when my mom opened it we all DIED laughing.

Alright, awesome - so now that you know how strange my family really is how about you try not to judge me too terribly and hop on over to Little Spindle because I promise you that this is the only post I have ever written that has anything to do with well preserved bones of any kind.

Thanks Caitlin for having me and I'll understand if you never ask me to guest post here ever again...

If I were an Ancient Greek I'd be Sansspectacles: A Photo Essay

So on Wednesday night I was pulling a sweatshirt over my head when I heard a giant snap. This happened:

My 2-year-old glasses snapped in half. I've never had that come even close to happening but here it was.  We tried to tape them:

My amazingly awesome husband tried to super-glue them:

But they were irreparably damaged. And it was 8 p.m. And we live 40 miles from the nearest optician.

I of course couldn't give up my internet, so I sat about 6 inches away from my computer all night.  This is me having an awesome Twitter chat sesh with Ivelisse and Jess:

I was the awkward one.  I'm always the awkward one.

Needless to say I had a little bit of a breakdown since I obviously couldn't drive myself anywhere and I had no backup glasses (smart, I know).

Rob, lovely little husband that he is, took the day off and drove me the next morning to the big city of Lewiston to get my new glasses.  Problem was, I had to spend the entire morning without glasses.

I thought you might like to see the first part of the day through my myopic, glasses-free eyes:

Cypress--or maybe a panther--getting ready to go to daycare.

Either my husband or a stranger come to steal all my things.

What a beautiful day, right?

I hear that Auburn Lake is beautiful this time of year.

Once at the optician's, which was located in a somewhat deserted mall, I picked out a designer brand (Coach, ooh-la-la) because I'm cool like that. I also picked out some prescription sunglasses, which I've never had before.  But of course we had to wait a little bit before I was granted the gift my full eyesight again, so we frolicked around the mall for a bit.

Because we're awesome music nerds, we ended up in the music store, where apparently you can create and sell your own CDs:

I'm not sure what an "Evangelism Explosion" is and I'm not sure I want to know.

Then we went to the bookstore, where we found a book called The Dog Selector (some sort of new anti-canine supervillian?), and I proceeded to take pictures of every dog that looked remotely like Cypress:

After an hour of waiting or so we returned and finally, my transition from Caitlin to some sort of bizarre Caitlin-Liz Lemon hybrid was complete:

I CAN SEEEE

Once I finally re-joined the world of the seeing my husband and I got some lunch at this yummy, eco-friendly and gluten-free-friendly restaurant while we waited for the optician to finish with my prescription sunglasses. I had a veggie fiesta bowl with black beans, rice, veggies and cheese, and Rob had a chicken burrito. I also got a delish smoothie made with bananas, berries and Maine honey. Which is pretty much the same as regular honey, except with more lobster.

We were pretty shocked (and pleased!) that this place existed because the city we were in is known by all Mainers as a bit of a sketchy place.  Most of the other local restaurants fall into the Ruby Tuesday/Denny's/Applebee's category.

Side note: I told Robbie that one of the upsides of eating gluten-free is that we actually have to scout out restaurants rather than just eating at Denny's.  Though most times I'm pretty sure he'd rather eat at Denny's.

Anyway we picked up the sunglasses and drove home having completed our mission.  I'm still getting used to the new glasses because apparently my stupid eyes are more comfortable without any glasses at all.

THE END.

P.S. Doesn't this mall sign look like something you'd see in a 1980s teen movie? There were even LIGHTS on the "Mall" part of it:

Welcome to Maine!

P.P.S. Enter my giveaway! You know you want to!

Featured - Love Story Series

Hi all, just a quick note to let you know that my and Rob's story was featured on Soxial Butterfly this weekend!  Amber has a lovely little blog there so go check it out!