Month: November 2013

I saw my brother and his wife today. For some people that isn’t a big deal, but since he lives in Florida and we live in Maryland we don’t see each other that often.

We met in South Carolina to swap cars. (long story)

It was late and we all looked like we had just driven to South Carolina so no obligatory Facebook selfie to prove we were together.

It was great to see him, even if it was for only a few hours. I like days like today because the deployment doesn’t see that real. It just seems like another crazy day where my brother and I meet up at a South Carolina Olive Garden at 9pm to switch cars. 🙂

My husband has been deployed to the Middle East for 274 days.  These are my real thoughts expressing my heart during his absence.  I appreciate your prayers and kind words as we cope, adapt, and carry on without him until August 2014.  To read from the beginning, click here.

For the last three months our home has been in some state of construction. We completely gutted and remodeled our kitchen, laundry room, breakfast room and dining room. We painted the entire upstairs (except my room) and just replaced our carpet.

While the project went as smoothly as remodeling can go, it has taken it’s toll on everyone.

Last night my son was on the phone with his friend and he told him he needed to go because it was time for dinner. His friend said,

“Let me guess, pizza rolls?”

The sad thing is that he was right. It was pizza rolls! We had some fruit too, but we are now known as a pizza roll family?

If you are a pizza roll family, I’m not judging. You gotta do what you gotta do. We just aren’t and not because I think we are better or have superior cooking skills. My kids don’t really like pizza rolls and they act like crazy animals when they eat that kind of food, which is why we try to avoid it.

But now we are the pizza roll family.

Something has to change around here.

It isn’t that hard to make dinner, what is hard is actually getting to the grocery store. It seems like every day I have great intentions of making a list and grocery shopping but things keep coming up and I never make it out of the house.

Since I have children who can drive they end up running to the store for milk, apples, and pizza rolls which apparently is enough to sustain us.

In other news, my eye flipped out after all the carpet was ripped up. I think it is a coincidence, but I’m not sure. I spent the whole day trying NOT to rub my eye off my face. Any suggestions? I tried a warm compress, but I don’t know if it worked since my eye is still driving me CRAZY!

 

See how the upper lid is red and swollen? Thoughts, ideas?

My husband has been deployed to the Middle East for 274 days.  These are my real thoughts expressing my heart during his absence.  I appreciate your prayers and kind words as we cope, adapt, and carry on without him until August 2014.  To read from the beginning, click here.

Sundays are my favorite and least favorite day of the week.

They are my favorite because we go to church, see friends, and go out to lunch.

They are my least favorite because I still haven’t figured out how to get our co-op homework finished before Sunday evening. So every Sunday evening is spent staying up late going over personal pronouns and the geography of Asia. Not.fun.at.all.

Today was extra special because my honorary eighth kid just got back from bootcamp. Before he left he was an almost daily visitor at our house and frequent dinner guest.

I didn’t think it would be a big deal when he went to bootcamp but we really, really missed him. Not only is he a nice young man, he’s wiling to move furniture, eat leftovers, babysit, run errands, and just hang around. You don’t find many kids like that these days.

He’s back from bootcamp for a few months until he goes to his next training. It made for a very happy day.

 

I couldn’t help but look at him and think about how when I was his age I was marrying into this military life. Seems like so long ago.

My husband has been deployed to the Middle East for 274 days.  These are my real thoughts expressing my heart during his absence.  I appreciate your prayers and kind words as we cope, adapt, and carry on without him until August 2014.  To read from the beginning, click here.

She lost a tooth today.

I had worried about this moment. Our first missed event.

I was worried there would be sadness over dad missing it.

Thankfully she wasn’t sad it all.

We took a picture so he could see it and she went about playing with her sister.

Later she asked how many more days were left…. I told her a lot, too many to add up.

She doesn’t really understand how long nine months is and that’s okay.

My husband has been deployed to the Middle East for 274 days.  These are my real thoughts expressing my heart during his absence.  I appreciate your prayers and kind words as we cope, adapt, and carry on without him until August 2014.  To read from the beginning, click here.

My son says I have an addiction.

An addiction to painting, remodeling, and moving my Craig’s List furniture around the house.

It’s better than drugs, right?

My husband’s friend told me today that I have this habit – as soon as he deploys or goes TDY I break out the paint and the ladder and start tearing my house apart.

Maybe I do.

This week I re-started my stair makeover. I’m painting all the stair trim and spindles white, and the banister dark gray. The problem? I have 147 spindles.

If I painted a spindle a day this deployment would be more than halfway over by the time I finished.

I started thinking over the past 20 years and realized I’ve done a lot of painting and re-doing. And most of it while he’s gone.

Maybe I just need to pass the time.

Maybe painting in my deployment coping strategy.

Who knows?

My husband has been deployed to the Middle East for 274 days.  These are my real thoughts expressing my heart during his absence.  I appreciate your prayers and kind words as we cope, adapt, and carry on without him until August 2014.  To read from the beginning, click here.

Conflict.

We had our first  deployment “fight” today, via text.

I was upset about something else and he took the brunt of my frustration.

I wish I could say that I quickly realized I was overreacting and apologized, but I didn’t.

I wish I could write some insightful story about working through conflict while separated, but I can’t.

It’s lonely here. I’m never actually alone, yet the person on earth who knows me best, loves me the most, and would do anything for me is halfway across the world.

I’ve written this post 100 times in my head, and deleted most of what I typed. I don’t want to discourage people and definitely don’t want people to feel sorry for me.

There is joy in all of this. There is laughter, there is growth. Sometimes you just have to dig a little deeper to find it. But really isn’t that true for all of us?

 

My husband has been deployed to the Middle East for 274 days.  These are my real thoughts expressing my heart during his absence.  I appreciate your prayers and kind words as we cope, adapt, and carry on without him until August 2014.  To read from the beginning, click here.

Uncomfortable.

I haven’t been able to put my finger on it until now, but that’s what it is.

After the initial flow of tears and sadness, comforting the kids, and living through the first few days, things just become uncomfortable.

He’s been gone before. While this is only our second deployment he’s traveled a lot over the past 20 years. We’ve had several moves where we’ve left early and he’s stayed behind for several months. So this isn’t new for us. But it feels different.

Uncomfortable.

It’s uncomfortable to be obsessed with life insurance plans.

It’s uncomfortable to talk to your children about whether their dad will live or die.

It’s uncomfortable to avoid the news because it’s just easier to not know what’s going on.

It’s uncomfortable to be the single person in a group of married friends.

It’s uncomfortable to think that for the next nine months any problem, big or small must be handled by me.

I found a bit of comfort today. I had a “date” with my nineteen year old. We went to dinner and a basketball game. We laughed, joked, caught a flying muffin, and had a fabulous time. For a few hours things were comfortable.

I am grateful.

My husband has been deployed to the Middle East for 274 days.  These are my real thoughts expressing my heart during his absence.  I appreciate your prayers and kind words as we cope, adapt, and carry on without him until August 2014.  To read from the beginning, click here.

I knew this would happen and I’m surprised it took two weeks.

“Mom.”

“Mom!”

“MOM!!!”

“I’m sick.”

My kids like to get sick when I’m the only parent. In fact I think they plan it. Whether it’s the stomach flu, regular flu, strep throat, ear infections, general unnamed illnesses that cause them to wake me up in the middle of the night, they get it.

Maybe it is because I’ve been a single parent a lot of the time or maybe my kids just get sick a lot, I’m not really sure.

The problem is, even after seven kids I’m not really good with the middle of the night, “I’m sick” routine.

I either get up, stumble into the bathroom, grab random medicines, and then fall back into bed only to wake up and not remember anything.

Or I get up, stumble into the bathroom, grab random medicines, and then fall back into bed only to then become wide awake.

My initial response to “I’m sick” is always,

“Get a drink of water and go back to bed, you’re fine.”

Then they usually cough, snot, or vomit on me and I’m forced to act.

Since their dad use to be a nurse my kids have grown accustom to the pharmacy we have in the bathroom and usually insist on some kind of medicine. Since I pay absolutely no attention to medicine, because I only take it if I’m dying- I am not the best person to be dosing it out around here.

Tonight it was the 13 year old and I am now wide awake, way before acceptable waking hours. I should be doing something productive with this time, but the house is freezing and I don’t want to get out of bed. I’ve spent the past hour watching Disney covers on youtube and pinning blue and silver Christmas decorations, pretending my house is is going to be put back together before Christmas.

On a happier note we went to the pet store to buy dog food and a bird feeder today. I was able to successfully fend off the pleas for several rodents, a kitten, and fish.

Victory.

My husband has been deployed to the Middle East for 274 days.  These are my real thoughts expressing my heart during his absence.  I appreciate your prayers and kind words as we cope, adapt, and carry on without him until August 2014.  To read from the beginning, click here.

Today was a really hard day. I’m not sure why today was so much harder than all the other days but it was.

I’m not sad, depressed, or overly tired. I’m just done.

It’s a strange mix of emotions and I never know exactly how I should be feeling. I just want things to be normal. And if normal means we’re a one parent family for the next nine months I’m okay with that. I just want it to be how it is.

It’s really hard to explain, but I’m sure many of you understand.

Tomorrow will be better.

My husband has been deployed to the Middle East for 274 days.  These are my real thoughts expressing my heart during his absence.  I appreciate your prayers and kind words as we cope, adapt, and carry on without him until August 2014.  To read from the beginning, click here.

So this happened today.

That is my brother-in-law, defying the laws of physics and possibly gravity, so he could hang the new light fixture my sister and I found on sale at Lowes. We will probably be banned from Lowes for the next five years.

Then this happened.

Note to self, don’t leave the ladder out after a project is finished. And yes, that is Cora on the ledge.

Since the day they saw the house for the first time they’ve wanted to make the ledge into a reading nook, with books, treehouse type of ladder, and of course a railing.

I’ve been against that idea until this happened. I was actually a little proud of them for being brave enough to get up there and thought it would be kind of cool to have a little space to read and escape.

My dad is coming in a few weeks – I just might have a project for him to work on while he is here.

I didn’t follow through on my commitment to myself to NOT be checking co-op homework on Sunday night. Once again I was irritated at 7:30pm as I checked for simple subjects and names of glaciers.

Maybe next week.

My husband has been deployed to the Middle East for 274 days.  These are my real thoughts expressing my heart during his absence.  I appreciate your prayers and kind words as we cope, adapt, and carry on without him until August 2014.  To read from the beginning, click here.