Abbie pictures for Mark

Today Mark was able to call around 11am.  I was so surprised to hear from him at that time!  Usually I don’t get to talk to him until after 11pm, but Abbie was up at 11am, so I held the phone up to her ear so her daddy could talk to her.  She said “Hi!!!” really loudly when she heard his voice and she started to laugh and get all excited.  I cried.  I couldn’t help it.  She definitely knows who her daddy is and that he’s not here right now and she’s never gotten so excited hearing someone talk to her on the phone before.  I know she misses him, but not as much as I do.

She’s changed so much in just the week and a half Mark’s been gone.  She now says “dada” quite clearly.  (She used to say “nana” more often than “dada” when we tried to get her to say it.)  She said bye now.  She tried to say cheese for the first time today.  She plays differently now.  Now instead of just banging things together, she really tries to figure things out.  We have little set of  stacking cups and she’ll dump them all out and then put them all back together.  She’ll put little toys inside the cups.  She’ll put the cups inside bigger toys.  She’ll actually push herself forward by herself on her bug bike.  If she needs help with something, she’ll bring it over to you and hold it up to you so you can help her.  That’s all new since Mark left.  As long as she doesn’t start to walk when he’s gone, we’ll be okay.

I realized 2 nights ago when I was talking to Mark that I hadn’t taken any pictures of her since he left, so I took a few last night.  These are for you Mark.     

On a side note, we’re over halfway done with this TDY!  YAY!  My friend Brittney and I hang out pretty much every day during the week.  We run errands together, she comes over and helps me organize my house and unpack some, we explore the area.  She definitely makes my days go by a lot faster and she helps me out so much.  She’s super with Abbie too, I’ll put Abbie in the car and Brittney will get the stroller or vice versa.  If Abbie gets fussy in the car, Brittney will hand her a toy.  And I like that her husband isn’t a pilot, he’s an EOD officer, so he disables bombs.  She just truly is a godsend to me.  If our husbands deploy at the same time, we’ll most likely travel around Europe together.  We’re going to go to Nova, which is a town known for pottery about 2 hrs from here sometime soon and we’re going to start exploring our area more too.

I feel much safer in this house than I was anticipating with Mark gone.  I don’t really feel unsafe at all actually.  Granted, I lock the place up like Fort Knox every night, but still.  Mark figured out before he left how to deadbolt our door.  You have to use a key from the inside and turn it like 10 times and then it drops like 5-6 bars down inside the door and the frame.  There’s no way someone could break that door down, unless they blew the door apart, but the gypsies aren’t violent like that.  I just set all my alarms and lock all the doors and windows and I actually sleep  pretty well.

That’s all for now!!!

Who’s coming to stay with me?

We borrowed an F-150 from friends in the squadron today so we could move our stuff from the TLF’s into our house.  When we dropped the truck off at their house, I got to talking to Kelly (owner of the truck).  She was telling me about the time they got robbed.  And how one of their neighbors recently got robbed.  And how a different neighbor got robbed 3 times in ONE month.  And how a friend of hers woke up in the middle of the night because her German Sheppard was growling and found a man at the foot of her bed….

So Kelly woke up one morning and found a rug from their porch all rolled up in the middle of the hallway outside their bedroom door.  She thought it was strange, but thought it was her kids.  (She has 3 boys.)  She walked a little further and found PVC piping from the yard in their house also.  After wandering around find odd things all over the place (apples from their kitchen table in the front yard, passport, wallets, visas on a bench on their front porch) they realized they’d been robbed while they all were sleeping.  The scary thing was, the wallets that they found on the front porch had been on the night stand right next to her husband, who was asleep.  They think they were gassed because they all woke up with horrible headaches, and they (not even the dog) didn’t wake up while people were roaming their house.  They found where the robbers drilled 2 holes in their window to break the lock and open it.

So this is the 3rd personal account I’ve heard of people getting robbed here.  Apparently the gypsies are only after gold and Euros.  They’ll leave all electronics, credit cards, and usually leave dollars, but they take Euros.  The thing about Italian law is that they won’t prosecute people for stealing from someone.  Even if you catch them in the act and call the police, the police here won’t do anything about it.  When Kelly got robbed and called the police, they didn’t even write anything down that she said.  And it is illegal for you to do anything to the robbers, even if you find them in your bedroom in the middle of the night.  You cannot physically harm them at all because Italians value people more than property and you will get in serious trouble for even scratching an intruder.  If we, as Americans, were to harm someone, even in defense of our property, the Air Force would deport us immediately, to protect us from the Italian government, which could lock you up for a long time if they caught you.  If an intruder comes on to your property and your dog bites them, that’s not good at all.  Even if you have “beware of dog” signs up, the robber can get your dog in trouble if it bites them, even if they’re on your property uninvited.   Talk about messed up, and scary!

Kelly was also telling me about a friend of hers who had a yellow lab.  Her friend got a call from the Italian police telling her to come to the station with 1200Euro to get her dog.  Apparently someone had hit her dog with their car, and it did damage to the persons car, so her friend had to bring money to pay for the damage to the persons car to get her dog back.  That’s also why they don’t have garage sales here.  I guess one of her friends tried to have a garage sale and the people that came to the sale just walked in to her house and started helping themselves to things in her house that weren’t for sale.  She was plucking things out of people’s arms as she was yelling at them to get out of her house.  The people here know that you can’t do anything to them when they take your things, without you getting into serious trouble, so they help themselves.  The gypsies also come to your house when they know you’ll be home, because they know your wallet full of money will be there when you are.

Needless to say, it’s scary to hear about all of this.  It wouldn’t be nearly as bad if I knew Mark was going to be home every night, but the reality is that he’ll be gone the majority of the time, and I’ll be there by myself with Abbie and the weinas.  So, who wants to come stay with me for 4 months early next year?  Or 4 different people can come for a month each.  Or 16 different people can come for a week each?  Please?  Anything so I don’t have to be alone.  With the gypsies.