Jessica Scott's Blog, page 33

The Evil Uterus or The Decisions that Haunt Me

Let me tell you a story.

When I was a company commander, we gave an article 15 to a soldier for smoking pot. So what, right?

She was pregnant. It was her third offense of smoking pot while she was pregnant. (we've been in the process of throwing her out for a while. It's a long story.).

We all know that smoking regular cigarettes during pregnancy is bad. Smoking pot is worse. Not just for mom but for baby. But when we called child protective services, I was basically told there was nothing they could do, not even open a case, because the child had not been born yet.

I wanted to act to protect this unborn child and could not because to do so set a dangerous precedent about whether mom's life or the baby's life was more important. While I may have wanted to tie her down and slap her silly, there was nothing I could do. Nothing.

Why am I telling you this? Because the war against my uterus is heating up. Ladies, I bet you had no idea your uterus was such a hot bed of evil did you? Legislatures all over the country are taking away the right to health care. The right for you to make basic decisions about your health care.

And yet, I wanted to make some pretty basic decisions about this young woman life. Against her will.

How is my wanting to make a decision any different than what these legislatures are doing when they pass bills saying that pregnancy now begins two weeks prior to conception. Or that birth control is murder.

Why are these the questions that keep me up at night? Why am I lying awake, wanting to put a young woman behind bars because she's smoking pot and causing harm to a child that I will have no stake in? It's not my kid, it's not my body, it's not my family.

And yet, this decision haunts me.

On the flip side, the legislative decisions being bandied about centering around my uterus enrage me. How are they different?

These are things I think about. This is what worries me. That my decisions are no different except in the scale of them.

The Red Circle by Brandon Webb

I had the great opportunity to read an early copy of Brandon Webb's The Red Circle: The Making of A Navy SEAL Sniper. I read a lot of military books about the war in Afghanistan and Iraq so it was right up my alley. Add in that it was a sneak peak and yeah, I was hooked.

The thing I love about being a soldier is the way that the guys to my left and right will give each other such a massive amount of shit for just about anything. Brandon's book takes you deep into the aggressive type-a male world of the Navy SEALs and gives you a front row seat to the making of men with honor and resolve. Not at the chest beating and check out the coolness that is me crap you see on TV. But at the strength and determination it takes to make it through the toughest training on earth. Then you have to survive the teams.

Brandon starts at the beginning, with his mom, who is stymied on how to keep this high energy kid out of trouble pretty much from the moment he starts crawling. As a mom, that had me hooked. As a soldier, hell yeah, the book drew me in and didn't let go.

Brandon's story starts out like any other kid who joins the military. I could completely relate to being that you private, thrown into a barracks with a ton of people you didn't know, didn't understand and maybe even didn't like. Young, wanting to go right when the military sends you left. Looking at the assholes in charge of you and not just thinking you can do better but knowing you can. And having the stubborn determination to keep fighting the machine that is determined to keep you down is what sets apart those people who succeed in the military and those who don't.

There were parts of this book that had me crying with laughter. When he goes into getting hazed for…well, the amount of shit his team puts him through for one tiny transgression is absolutely amazing. You'll never look at hot sauce the same again.

Harder though, is when he shifts to doing what SEALs do and how the world changed after the bombing of the USS Cole. For those of us who were in the military of the late 90s, we remember well that the shift started in 1998, long before those buildings burned in 2001 and Brandon doesn't flinch away from those changes. He takes you through the mountains in the Hindu Kush.

And he takes you through losing friends. Brothers lost in combat. Friends who died while he could do nothing. Through a little boy asking where his daddy is. Through fighting with a risk averse officer who won't send them into the fight while their buddies were dying.

For anyone who has lost a loved one to this or any other war, there are parts of this book that are hard to read. But the experience is one you don't want to miss. Brandon's book is for anyone who wants to read about a man who trained the world's deadliest snipers but more, it's a book for anyone who wants to get a glimpse, the barest taste of what it feels like to be part of the elite.

The Red Circle is a great read, one that I highly recommend to all readers.

You can order The Red Circle at these fine booksellers. You want this. Trust me.

Indiebound | Powell's | Amazon | B & N | Borders

Sometimes, The Relief is So Strong, It’s Crushing

Last night my husband and I attended his battalion ball. You can check out the snark and sarcasm on twitter under the hashtag #tweetsfromtheball if you’re that interested but all in all, it was a really good time.


What’s always neat, though, for me as both a spouse and a soldier, is how often spouses are left out of the conversations. These men and women deployed together. When they talk about SRO, they understand what they mean without having to ask for clarification (sustainment replenishment operations). When they talk about Anvil and Forge, they understand what that means (routes in southern Iraq).

Last night, I watched and observed. The stories. The drinking and laughter about truly dark moments where they were sure someone had died. The failed communications. The blown up routes. All these things were laughed and joked about when less than six months ago, they were sitting in the the middle of the desert, aircraft overhead, the last boots on the ground (yes I know we have advisors on the ground).

Sitting last night, listening to the trash talking and the jokes and the drunken tales of air conditioned porta potties, I laughed with them. But this morning, I woke (not hungover) and felt a crushing sadness. I couldn’t explain my need to cry until it hit me: I was not sad. I was so fucking relieved my husband had made it home. Not once. Not twice. Four combat tours.

Tours like OIF 2, when he traveled the road to Fallujah, through Sadr City. Through OIF 06-08 when he did not see his daughter until she was nearly a year old, having missed her birth. OIF 09-11, when we lost a battalion commander and lived in fear that a good friend of ours down in 6-9 ARS might be next. And finally through New Dawn, when I prayed that there would be not one more loss of life.

Last night, it dawned on several of us that there are soldiers who just returned home who have no idea what the war was really like. They think when we’re bitching at them to put their eye pro on, we’re just bitching. They don’t realize that men like my husband have literally seen lives saved from those glasses. They don’t realize that Greywolf has fought some of the hardest fights of the conventional war in Iraq.

They don’t know any of the names on the First Team Memorial.

This then is the transition we are stepping into. The transition between those who have seen combat and those who have sat on the FOB or those who have sat in the Pentagon. Those who have run the roads or flown over them or merely looked at them on a map. Those who have lived on shitty fobs and cops, shitting in buckets and living on MREs in 120 degree heat while others went to the DFAC every day and ate Baskin Robbins.

There are different perceptions of the war. Different memories. Different lessons learned. This then is the takeaway that we as army leaders must some how implement as we transition to a time that is either forgotten or never experienced by a large portion of our force.

But today, I am relieved. When he crossed the border in Kuwait, I watched it on the news. The only thing I could think was that he made it.

Today, that feels no less true, no less real and no less crushing in it’s magnitude.

He made it.

Sometimes, The Relief is So Strong, It's Crushing

Last night my husband and I attended his battalion ball. You can check out the snark and sarcasm on twitter under the hashtag #tweetsfromtheball if you're that interested but all in all, it was a really good time.


What's always neat, though, for me as both a spouse and a soldier, is how often spouses are left out of the conversations. These men and women deployed together. When they talk about SRO, they understand what they mean without having to ask for clarification (sustainment replenishment operations). When they talk about Anvil and Forge, they understand what that means (routes in southern Iraq).

Last night, I watched and observed. The stories. The drinking and laughter about truly dark moments where they were sure someone had died. The failed communications. The blown up routes. All these things were laughed and joked about when less than six months ago, they were sitting in the the middle of the desert, aircraft overhead, the last boots on the ground (yes I know we have advisors on the ground).

Sitting last night, listening to the trash talking and the jokes and the drunken tales of air conditioned porta potties, I laughed with them. But this morning, I woke (not hungover) and felt a crushing sadness. I couldn't explain my need to cry until it hit me: I was not sad. I was so fucking relieved my husband had made it home. Not once. Not twice. Four combat tours.

Tours like OIF 2, when he traveled the road to Fallujah, through Sadr City. Through OIF 06-08 when he did not see his daughter until she was nearly a year old, having missed her birth. OIF 09-11, when we lost a battalion commander and lived in fear that a good friend of ours down in 6-9 ARS might be next. And finally through New Dawn, when I prayed that there would be not one more loss of life.

Last night, it dawned on several of us that there are soldiers who just returned home who have no idea what the war was really like. They think when we're bitching at them to put their eye pro on, we're just bitching. They don't realize that men like my husband have literally seen lives saved from those glasses. They don't realize that Greywolf has fought some of the hardest fights of the conventional war in Iraq.

They don't know any of the names on the First Team Memorial.

This then is the transition we are stepping into. The transition between those who have seen combat and those who have sat on the FOB or those who have sat in the Pentagon. Those who have run the roads or flown over them or merely looked at them on a map. Those who have lived on shitty fobs and cops, shitting in buckets and living on MREs in 120 degree heat while others went to the DFAC every day and ate Baskin Robbins.

There are different perceptions of the war. Different memories. Different lessons learned. This then is the takeaway that we as army leaders must some how implement as we transition to a time that is either forgotten or never experienced by a large portion of our force.

But today, I am relieved. When he crossed the border in Kuwait, I watched it on the news. The only thing I could think was that he made it.

Today, that feels no less true, no less real and no less crushing in it's magnitude.

He made it.

Thoughts on Quitting Social Networking

So about two weeks ago, I decided to go offline to finish revisions on my current book. I was about a week out from deadline, so I needed to clear my head and focus. And, while I did not stay offline completely, I did manage about a 95% reduction in my Facebook usage and a near total reduction in my twitter usage until I turned in my book.

Not complete but significant. Guess I'd make a terrible recovering addict. Anyway, some weird things happened while I was offline. Some are still continuing.

The first thing was that I lost out on any interesting articles and news stories. Twitter, for me anyway, isn't just about going to a massive cocktail party and making conversation. It's also a way for me to get news and read neat stuff that I wouldn't necessarily see in the mainstream news sites. So I missed out on a lot of articles.

But, in that time I normally spent reading articles, I read two books. The Science of Evil and With Liberty And Justice for Some, both of which I'll blog about later this week, as I'm determined to get back into regular blogging. But I digress. I read both books last week and it was really neat to not have the urge to go online and check twitter but instead to read books (one physical and one digital). Sadly, there was no noticeable change in how I'm doing most of my reading these days (on my iPad) but I'm still buying both the physical book and the digital book versions. Again, another post.

The other piece I missed out on was interacting with friends online. If there were any big announcements last week, I missed them. I missed out on the march madness for books, DABWAHA.

What's really odd for me, though, is that it's been over a week since I turned my book in and I'm still not having the intense urges to get back online. The social networking sites are there but they're not constantly *there*. I'm not checking them out to see what's changed. So it's a strange thing that happened. The noise in my head settled somewhat and I was able to concentrate. Maybe my thoughts weren't going a thousand miles an hour because I wasn't constantly adding new information to my brain.

Either way, it was a neat experiment. I think I may have come out better for it.

Have you quit social networking before? How did that work out for you?

Reading Romances Drinks & Books Blog Hop

The DRINKING AND WINNING giveaway hop is a giveaway event where each participating blog hosts their own giveaway and then all hosts are linked up so our followers hop between one blog to another!

So for Because of You the perfect drink (for a girl) is a Tiramisu Martini

The Tiramisu:

1 oz Buttershots

1 oz Dark Creme de Cacao

1 oz Espresso Vodka

1 oz Vanilla Vodka

Shake vigorously (or blend with ice) and have a real nice night!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Cold Turkey

Before I published, several authors advised me to avoid reviews. I'll admit to not being perfect about it but by and large, I have skipped over them. Not because I don't appreciate them, I absolutely do. It's an amazing feeling to see the impact a book I wrote had, both good and bad.

The problem, though, is that the bad ones get stuck in my head but so do the good ones. I worry about the readers who are expecting x, y or z. I struggled to clear the noise out of my brain and just write the story that the characters need. And let me tell you, it's a hell of a lot harder than it looks.

Late last week, I received some particularly rough feedback from my editor. This is the third book that has epically kicked my ass. I've missed the emotional notes. I've missed the character development. The stories are not emotionally satisfying and most of all, they're not romance. So I've had a hell of a time finding the heart of these stories. I've been struggling mightily to get it right. So after a little bit of sulking and wound licking, I dusted myself off and figured it out (I heart my editor, a woman who is not afraid to tell me no, this character did not engage me. at all). And I wrote. I wrote and wrote and wrote and it poured out of me.

And while this was happening, I was not checking twitter constantly.

I'm still riding that awesome wave of revisions. I want to get this thing cleaned up and polished and turned in but mostly, I want to write. I want to enjoy that rush of getting the story right.

So I'm going off line. I'm going to redirect the Facebook notifications to another folder so I'm not tempted. I'm not going to check in, not even while I'm working out (it's damn hard to write smexy times when arguing about politics and birth control, let me tell you). I'm going to dive into the revisions at home and counting widgets at work.

I'll be back when I type the end (this could take a while). So wish me luck!

Romance At Random St Patrick’s Day Hop

It’s blog hopping time again! And there’s two going on around here.

First up is the Romance At Random St Patrick’s Day Hop and I’m testing out rafflecopter so we’ll have to see how it goes.

Also, make sure to check out every site because each one is giving away different prizes. The winner will be posted here for my site on April 1st (no April Fool’s joke, I promise)

Have fun!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

You need javascript enabled to see this giveaway.

And don’t forget to check out the other great links in the hop!

Romance At Random St Patrick's Day Hop

It's blog hopping time again! And there's two going on around here.

First up is the Romance At Random St Patrick's Day Hop and I'm testing out rafflecopter so we'll have to see how it goes.

Also, make sure to check out every site because each one is giving away different prizes. The winner will be posted here for my site on April 1st (no April Fool's joke, I promise)

Have fun!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

You need javascript enabled to see this giveaway.

And don't forget to check out the other great links in the hop!

Diary of A Hamster Day 12: Snatched from the Jaws of Death

My life had been getting back to normal. I'd escaped over Christmas but very rapidly recaptured due to the sneaky human putting down peanut butter. It's kryptonite for hamsters. Anyway, I'd gotten back to school and proceeded to ignore the little bastards in my classroom. The human there didn't talk to me much. So I was free to bulk up.

Little did I know I would soon be back in the hellish prison due to a phenomenon called Spring Break. Spring Break my ass. It's hell. Not only are there three massive wolf looking creatures, the orange one has all out told me that Hamster is on her bucket list. And she'd old as dirt so I'm thinking my odds aren't that good.

The problem is, the black eyed devil is no longer the only one interested in me. Now the fluffy grey spawn of Satan has the audacity to sit on my cage and drool on me. I have wood shavings in my cage. This is not good.

Today, the chance to escape presented itself and I seized the moment. The two little humanoids were busy in the kitchen, fighting about applesauce or some such nonsense. Why doesn't the big one just smother the little on and declare dominance over the whole house? That's how hamsters do it. Speaking of which, the little interloper who moved in since I was last here, Hammy? She's the most pussy whipped hamster I've ever seen in my life. She's pathetic. Not even deserving of the name Syrian Battle Hamster.

But back to my escape. They left the wheel to my car open and the started fighting. I took the chance and quickly shimmied down the table and onto the floor and into…

Hell would be too nice a word for it. Immediately the orange one was there, sniffing at me with that damn black nose that was bigger than my ass. Trust me, that's saying something.

I think I blacked out. I possibly shit myself because there is poo in my fur. But the next thing I know, the orange beast has dropped me and I'm being wrapped in warm, red towel.

I look into the eyes of my savior, only to find myself…back in my cell. I'm not altogether certain what happened. But today, victory was snatched from the jaws of death.

I'm getting to old for this.