We’re proud to introduce our guest blogger. Please welcome Army Staff Sargeant Natasha Gibson. She’s currently stationed at Fort Dix in New Jersey. Though she’s from Southern New Jersey, Natasha says, “I was born in Germany and lived there with my parents for seven years. Yes, I am a military brat. I have been serving the U.S. Army for nine years exactly.”
The Push Up
I’ll finally took my first Army Physical Fitness Test since giving birth to my 8-month-old daughter on Dec. 29, 2008. Prior to getting pregnant, the push up part of the test was always a breeze. My goal was always to “max out” by hitting a level of 100 percent fitness for my age group by doing at least 45 push-ups in a two-minute period. “Too easy”
On Sept. 8, I took a PT test and discovered that what was once a quick 45 push-ups in well under two minutes turned into a slow 23 barely keeping myself from collapsing face first in to the dew-coated grass beneath me. I asked myself, “Am I still out of shape? Have all those months of training up after child birth been in vain?”
The answer I was given was “No.” I had just forgotten the correct form and thus worked twice as hard only to produce half the results. So I did some research and found this help video. In this video, two Army Drill Sergeants demonstrate how to execute the a correct “Army” push-up. Check it out.
We are interrupting out regular gummy program to bring you a guest post from the author of Mrs. Lieutenant, Phyllis Zimbler Miller!
When my novel Mrs. Lieutenant was published in April 2008, I was focused on sharing the fictionalized account of my experiences as a new Mrs. Lieutenant in the spring of 1970 right after the Kent State shootings.
My goal at that moment was to present the point-of-view of new officers’ wives during the Vietnam War-era. Yet only a few months later I had become actively involved in volunteer activities to support our military personnel and their families today.
In November of 2008 Nancy Brown of YourMilitary.com asked me to be her co-host on the new BlogTalkRadio show YourMilitaryLife.com. I said yes, and Nancy and I were off and running. [More...]
Our show has given us the opportunity to interview an incredible range of people supporting our troops and their families. And Nancy and I have been most impressed by the efforts of everyday Americans to step up to the plate to provide for needs that aren’t met by the government.
You can read blog posts about some of these amazing people at the Mrs. Lieutenant blog and you can listen to audio replays of show interviews at YourMilitaryLife.com.
Plus check out my two websites OperationSupportJewsintheMilitary.com and InSupportofOurTroops.com. I’m planning to add to this latter website the stories in their own words of some of these everyday Americans.
Phyllis Zimbler Miller
And in an effort to both educate the general American public about troops serving now as well as about troops serving in the Vietnam War, I’ve just launched History Through the Arts to encourage high school language arts, U.S. history and social studies teachers to use my novel Mrs. Lieutenant as an adjunct to classroom textbooks. You can read more about this project at here and here.
FYI – Nancy and I have done several BlogTalkRadio interviews to get out information about help for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). There’s a free report at InSupportofOurTroops.com that everyone should read in order to recognize the signs of PTSD.
I am truly thankful that my novel Mrs. Lieutenant has led me to “meet” so many wonderful Americans. And, as Nancy ends each of our BlogTalkRadio shows, God bless our troops!
