Day 182 (242) - the other side of the rainbow.

So, you know and I know, that if there was only one thing I'm good at (although we know I'm good at lots of things, let's pretend it's just one) it's expecting too much of myself and then beating myself up afterwards when I don't feel like I rose to my expectations. I had so many things that I was going to do this deployment. I went into this stupid thing with this grand visions that I was just going to be a rock star. All those times that I sat there, by myself and just cried from loneliness, or self pity, or anger or frustration or sleep deprivation. I never blamed the situation or the person who said the careless thing to me, or about a thousand other things - I blamed myself for not dealing with it better. It has taken me almost 9 months, and just a few weeks shy of you coming home to realize that I didn't suck at this and that it wasn't the worst experience of my life and that I am, indeed, not the worst mother/wife/sister/friend/navy wife on the face of the planet.

I would sit here and pen all these posts in my head of things I wanted to say to people, well hell, to the world in general. Some of the stupid and insensitive things that would come out of peoples mouths were ridiculous and I still blamed myself for them, as if it's my fault people are tactless.

This deployment has made me realize who my real family and friends are. People who I thought were family are now barely better then friends. And people who were just friends, I can now not picture them not being in my life. I wanted to tell anyone and everyone, "please don't feel sorry for us". Those people who pushed the subject with me and would be all "poor you", I always inexplicable explained it away as "we chose this life, please quit apologizing". I'm not sure why - but I just felt that it was my fault for letting them say stupid things to me.

But before I start to just ramble - this is what I do know. I have made it through this. My children are happy, my children are healthy (in theory anyway, colds be damned). None of us want for anything. I have managed our way through 8000 miles of cross country visiting, moving into a house, dealing with idiot landlords and stupid utility companies. I've gone through emergency room visits, urgent care visits, and more shots then I care to count. I've offered support to my people, I've offered support to my kids. I turned my frustration into yet another creative outlet (I'm sure your real happy about that - wait till you see all the yarn when you get home). I didn't allow myself to get beat by this. I had rough days, and rough nights. I had times when I just wanted to sit and cry and not think about all the responsibility that I had on my shoulder, all the responsibility that you had added to the frustration of not having your family. Moments where I felt that everything was crashing down around me and I didn't know how I was going to make my kids realize that they do in fact have a strong mother. But I am ahead of the game, I came out as a victor in all this.

I'm on the downside of this countdown and yes, I'm incredibly anxious. I've figured out how to make our routines and our lives work with just the three of us, all while making sure they know who you are...so yes, I'm anxious. Anxious to see us. We work very well as a family of four and we've been apart all this time, I can't wait to see how amazing we are as a family of four together.

I beat this and I'm a better person. I used to hate it when people say, "I couldn't do that....I'm not sure how you do." In fact, I've said that to someone before and I really should email her and apologize. That friend said to me, "You just do, you do because you have to". And we are stronger people for it. But now I get it why people say that. They don't see what the rest of us know. That we are strong women. We are smart, resourceful and forward thinkers. We are home base for a our families. We are president, vice president, treasurer and secretary. We are historians. We are peacemakers and lawmakers. We are excellent communicators. We are nurturers and lovers and fighters and hardasses. We demand excellence, we demand to be taken notice, we demand that our children get noticed, and not get left behind. So don't feel pity for us, instead be proud of us. Be proud of our husbands. Be proud of our children. Because this is a hard life, it's not easy but we are better for it.

I'm a Navy wife.

Day 178 (238) words

words are just words unless you put them into action.

Day 147 (207) Happy Birthday Nugget!

HAPPY 1ST BIRTHDAY ZAYDA ANN!

woah! a year old....it's crazy. This year has really gone by super fast, which is nice on one hand and crappy on the other.

I've had to sit and really think about her moments because it just seemed like one second I had a baby that was completely helpless, and dependent on me for everything and without even thinking about it I damn near have a toddler. She's such a beautiful girl and SO independent! She really doesn't like me to do anything for her anymore unless SHE wants me to do it. and so smart! She's just like her brother that way.

The other day I realized I hadn't taught her to clap or really showed her. So I showed her and literally, 3 minutes later, she was clapping and it's suddenly her favorite thing. The other day, I was cleaning out her ears, and I handed her a q-tip to get her to sit still and let me do it, and what does she do? She tries to clean her own ear - what 1 year old does that!? Maybe a ton of other babies do that but I'm still convinced mine is a genius because she can clean her own ears. I sat her in her high chair about 4days ago, put her little bowl of applesauce in front of her and the spoon next to it with the intention of getting the rest of her dinner adn coming back and feeding her. I came around the corner and she had spoon in hand and was feeding herself. So quick...it's all just so quick!

We are really close to being done! We leave in 3 days to start our little journey across the country and then we will be home and dealing with a whole other set of problems. This deployment didn't go the way we planned, things that we wanted to happen didn't happen but that's okay because it kept me busy and it kept me from focusing on you being gone. But I'm ready to get home and focusing on you being home :)

We miss you baby.....Zayda has been calling for her dada all day. They love me but they really want you...I'm fairly certain they are tired of their mama, lol! xoxox - me

Day 133 ( ahem - 193) this week always sucks

So hunny...you know I bitch to you on here because I don't particularly like to bitch to you in email because it's like I'm not really complaining if I do it here. So here it is.

This week is sucking!

It always sucks. Ever since I turned 25, it just sucks. There is nothing to be done about it...you know it's not your fault, it just, inevitably, always sucks. The whole week is a series of craptacular events that culminate into a really shitastic day on my actual birthday.

I don't really have high hopes for this one either. God love Tara, tho, she is going to try. She wants me to go out tomorrow to have some me time, but instead, I'll be spending a small fortune getting my phone fixed. She says I should get it fixed and then still go get a pedicure/massage/manicure. I say, after spending all that money on my phone, I won't want to get a pedicure. And I'm trying to just not think about my birthday day that much. The girls and I are doing dinner and a movie...and you can guess, that's just going to go swimmingly. That situation is getting to be stickier and stickier and I really don't know how to handle it.

I'm ready to go home and be a family again. I'm ready to sleep in our bed...and smell your clothes. Does that make me weird? I have a shirt here of yours...but your scent is gone from it. I accidentaly washed it one day, and yes, I cried when I realized I did it. :)

Zayda's eyes light up whens she sees you in your daddy videos. It's beautiful!

Day 117 - Some day I'm gonna figure it out....

one of these days - I'm totally going to figure out how to control the things that there is no way that I possibly CAN control them. A for instance you ask? kay...this stupid house. I say stupid, because the ordeal is stressing me out, it has barely been 48 hours and it is stressing me out. I'm beginning to think that I can't feel right with myself unless I'm stressing about something, makes me feel like I am not nearly as easy going as I thought I was. *sigh*

So the owner of the new house, I talked to her, she talked to me, we were like "yaaayyyy!" and I thought it was pretty much a done deal. She gave the impression that I wouldn't have to mess with an application and all that BS. Apparently I was wrong because the next day, she pops up with an application and says get it back and all that, so I get all that for her and send it off. Then she texts me questioning the fact that we had a house in Marysville. Shit.

and when I was filling that out, I felt this huge sense of dread just pouring down me, because I was like fuckity fuck fuck fuck....this house is going to bite us in the ass. I couldn't very well NOT put it down...hell it wanted us to go all the way back to the Athens house. So that fact that in 2.5 years we have held 2 leases at 2 places in 2 states for appx 10 months and 11.5 mth respecitively, does not bode well for us. le effing double sigh. So I just put it down, and send off and she's questioning where we are currently staying and whats up with the other house and yada. She says okay great thanks, and that was last night at like 6 pm.

and now nothing.

so it's been 30 hours - and nothing. No, ohhhh I'm still looking it over...or oh, I think you suck, no thanks. Quite frankly I think that once she saw your paychecks and realized that seriously, theres nothing to worry about, then she should have us sign on the dotted line.

What I'm really getting at, is I'm afraid she called Jaime, and the shitty ex-landlord that he is, trashed us. And if that's the case...he has no clue what reign of terror will come down on him. see? worrying about something when, as Tara has pointed out, there is technically nothing to worry about yet.

oh well...hunny...you know me...if I can't control it, it drives me nuts till I have it worked out. dbl ugh.

I know....I'm a nerd. But you love me, and you're stuck...so there.

love you.....miss you....can you come home now?

Day 107 - skype hype bs

If I have to look on facebook one more time to see all the fabulous time that everyone had skyping with their hubbies...or so glad their kids got to open presents with dad or whatever...I'm gonna vomit. Don't some people realize that most people are not getting that chance and they could be hurting other peoples feelings? It makes me mad and then it irritates me that I am that mad about it. bull hickey.

well....back to putting on my smiley face:)

love you hunny....one more day down. Next Christmas will be better:)

Day 105 (+ 60) .....I'm over counting now....

A minute passes in the blink of an eye.An hour has passed without even thinking about it. Next thing you know, it's time to go to bed.Before you've had to time to comprehend, the week has flown by. The month only had time to barely register in my mind.And now we are getting ready for Christmas.

Time is such an evil, evil thing. I have never wanted time to pass so quickly, to just leave me in a fleeting moment and it never listens except at the times I don't want it to pass. So many times I have sat on the couch, while the kids are asleep and I'm all alone and time seems to have all of a sudden, come crashing at me like a tidal wave and come to a complete and sudden stop and then I realize how alone I am. And that's when I let myself get upset about all this. That's when time seems to drag and when I look at the clock, hating it because the minute hand never seems to go around the clock fast enough. When the kids are asleep, time stops. And I have nothing to do but sit here and wonder about what I missed when time was going so fast. If you were here, we would be doing nothing special. We would be sitting on the couch, you would probably be falling asleep and I would be trolling around on my computer and we probably wouldn't even be paying attention to one another, but it would be time...slowly spent together.

But time does not listen to me, like a great many things. Today I sat looking at our kids because you left babies...little babies. And now Steven is such a little man. He is carrying on full conversations, and counting to 100 and trying to take care of ME. A song came on the radio the other day, I had turned it on and was dancing for our kids, trying to be silly. And "I'll be home for Christmas" came on again. And I sat, and cried, immediately. In front of our kids. And our children sought me out and gave me comfort. Zayda laid her little head on my shoulder. Steven stopped dancing and looked at me and said, "what's wrong, momma?! what's wrong?!" and then he grabbed his lovey, put it on my shoulder, nestled in my lap and proceeded to stroke my hair and make little ...sh sh shhhhh sounds. How sad is it that our 2 year old was giving me comfort. Like I said, Steven is a little man. And our nugget....oh our nugget. There is on sense in lying and saying that you left a baby and you are coming back to a baby...she is not a baby. She is only about 6 inches shorter then her brother...and he's tall. She is trying so hard to be a big girl...she is just bursting with positive energy and joy. One of my favorite things about her is that, even if just on the TV, when she hears your voice....she RADIATES. So many times, when Steven strokes my arm, or Zayda crawls up and clings to my legs, or the two of them sit and bump forheads and giggle uncontrollably, that's when I want time to stop and slow down..and it never does. The moment is but a fleeting one, and then it's gone.

Getting ready for Christmas without you has been hard...and I still don't feel like Christmas. It's going to be simply going through the motions. I thank God that our kids are small enough that they still don't totally get it. Steven will get that he is getting new toys, but he will not understand that this is a time of family togetherness, of rejoicing in the Blessings that God has so graciously bestowed upon us.

I miss you so much, more then I can pour in the words. I've started to daydream about seeing you again, touching your face, grabbing your hair, entwining my fingers with yours. But most of all, I imagine going to bed at night. I miss our nightly chats. Even tho I know it sometimes irritated you that we would get into bed, and still not be asleep for an hour because I want to talk...it's some of my favorite time with you, my daily digression for the day. But at least we are closer to it then farther away.

you should be opening up your Christmas presents soon. Merry Christmas baby....here's looking to a promising new year.
xoxox
me

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