Milspouse Friday Fill-in: Finals Week Edition

I don't have any finals. When I tell people that, they assume I am out partying. The truth is (and I promise you won't get cooties just from reading this), I haven't showered since Monday morning. I know. It's gross. I wreak. I promise I am not on some hippie grunge fest. I've just been busy in the lab and I have no washing machine and I am conserving clean clothes for traveling over the holidays with Senior Jefe who does not appreciate his wife being grungy.
What he doesn't know can't hurt him ;D.
Plus, and maybe I am a bad person for feeling this way, I just don't see the point of taking a shower to put dirty clothes back on. It seems more gross to me. So I am rocking my lab uniform: VS BIG U sweat pants, clean sports bra and panties (I have standards), clean tee (at this point they are old Navy PT uniform shirts that are no longer authorized for hubbs...no sense throwing them out), purple doo-rag, and Navy PT sweatshirt, oh and shoes. It's uber sexy, just ask any other grad student who hasn't showered in a week. I hear rumors there is a shower in the bldg that isn't a safety shower. I have yet to find it.
But, I have gotten a lot of work done this week, which makes me feel better about staring at the ceiling W, Th, Sat, and Sun last week. So while I am debating whether to do more work or go take a shower, I thought I would undertake Wife of a Sailor's weekly fill-in:


What is the best gift you have ever received or given? from Jessica Lynn Writes
I feel like I already wrote about the best gift I have ever received. So, I guess I'll go with the best gift I think I have ever given. I am TERRIFIED of needles going into me. Full on panic attack terrified. As a result, unless it is medically necessary for me to be poked and prodded, no one better come near me with one.

We moved to Corpus Christi, TX right after Thanksgiving 2007. Hubby checked into the command and that was the last I heard about the command until we got an email one morning stating that the XO's wife (whose name I am not sure I ever learned; we never met) had been in a terrible accident and required a blood transfusion. They asked people to donate blood to the blood bank for the transfusion. 

I am O-negative, so essentially a universal donor, but I don't donate blood because of the whole needles, panic attack thing. This seemed like a time when I needed to make an exception to my otherwise valid rule, so I packed up and headed straight away to the blood bank and was summarily poked and prodded by needles, had a panic attack, etc. The people at the blood bank were amazing, or I would not have made it through. I can't say my blood directly saved her life, because well I am a scientist and I can't prove it was my blood or some other bag blood hanging around, but my intention was to give her my blood.

I know the XO's wife made a full recovery, because that is what my husband reported to me, but I don't know anything more about it and I can't say I ever heard anything from anyone at that command ever again. It's kind of a pathethic story, but if that one doesn't count for some reason, the following month I flew home after Christmas to take care of my Dad who had just had a hernia operation (and a tummy tuck at the same time because otherwise the hernia repair wasn't going to hold) and my two half sisters. I cleaned his wounds and was the one who read his surgeon the riot act when the wound got infected (despite my best efforts) and the asshole left my Dad in the waiting room for hours before seeing him so he could see bimbos who got nose jobs. He, unlike the command, did call me for several months after the incident to make sure my Dad was healthy (and that I wasn't going to sue him).  Go figure.

Do you celebrate holidays differently when your loved one is deployed/gone or do you keep tradition? from The Albrecht Squad

Absolutely differently. I tend to fill my holidays w/ friends, food, and wine when Senior Jefe is gone, which this year is really the first year we will spend Xmas together (in 6 yrs of marriage). When he is home, I definitely tend to blow family and friends off unless he wants to hang with people, because I really just want to absorb being with him when I get that rare opportunity. Either way, I have no real tradition.

If you celebrate Christmas, do you put an angel, star or something else on the top of your tree?

I don't really celebrate Christmas by putting a tree up. I worry about killing a perfectly good tree. When we have a permanent roost, I might readopt my father's tradition of buying a live tree each year and  planting it after Christmas. Some of those trees are huge now and then I would be reducing CO2 in the atmosphere.

What are your three favorite websites?

NPR.org, despite their ignorant post yesterday about dishes. No, I am not over it yet, but I will be. I promise.

twitter.com, because I learn so much about what other scientists are doing/thinking in real time.

and google.com because it takes me almost everywhere I want to go. Lame, I know, but google scholar, in particular, is the best research tool ever.

On your man do you prefer… boxers, briefs or boxer briefs? Or commando? (yeah, I’m starting to get desperate for questions!)

I hate briefs. I wonder about boxers, because I can't see how something that baggy doesn't get all bunched and wrinkled under your pants and becomes all uncomfortable. Isn't that terrible. I can't just enjoy underwear without analyzing it. I need a vacation :D. But, I guess a real answer is I'll take him however I can get him.