Rock the boat.....

......so tonight I am going to praise one of my husband's GREAT (yet annoying LOL) qualities. He is the type of person that if he "bitches" about something then it needs fixed, he can prove it, and he has the solution. I HATE it, yet love it at the same time. He's the type of guy who if he said "the sky is green" I would look out of amazement not because he said something bizarre....because if he cared enough to tell me then I'd KNOW it was green.

So this leads me to a brief synopsis of this deployment. Let me first say he was "name selected" for this tour...for all you military women you know there is NO getting out of that. Anyway this truly is a big deal. Shayne is amazing he sees something wrong and fixes it...its how he functions. So long story short he's on the island and he sees issues he wants/needs fixed so this time he sent the "info" up the chain of command because this chain wants to know everything. Anyway he ended up on night shift...I think he might have pissed someone off LOL. But here's the deal, it lead me to toss this around before I blogged. I believe that if safety of military personnel is an issue or something is not SOP (standard operating procedure) then it needs addressed whether anyone gets pissed or not. So I told him so, and he was like "I have taught you well young padawan" LOL. And he's right...better to ROCK the BOAT if it will IMPROVE a situation that NEEDS improving, than to sit silently by and watch the shit hit the fan right?

So as a human being (not man or woman...military or non military) I want to know if you have ROCKED the Boat in your life and if you KNEW it was right or did it to just be a "pain in the butt." I can say that I have done it for both reasons...and some were just out of sheer nastiness...I know not the best karma to get but it was NECESSARY for my own sanity occasionally LOL. I BELIEVE that the law is the law, and fair is fair (as fair as can be in life), and that although there are GRAY areas, that right is right and wrong is wrong. Now that's not my "rose colored" glasses here, its life. I think that we SHOULD ALL stand up for what we believe in, and what is right and just and fair in the world...and we BETTER darn well stand up when there are injustices and hate being demonstrated.

Its our job to care for each other....I don't wanna quote Hillary Clinton to much but "it does take a village" but not to just raise a child, to live in peace and fairness for EVERYONE. So do you wanna ROCK the BOAT with me and be part of the VILLAGE or will you be sitting silently by and waiting for the IMPLOSION?

When life hands you lemons....

...do you make Lemonade? I would rather make a Lemon Shake. I mean it's a LOT sweeter, and always leaves you wanting more. So that's how I have decided to approach my life this week. See Sunday is the OFFICIAL "end of week-end~beginning of week" kind of day.

Last week was TOUGH for me (as ya all saw/read) but I am TRYING. I have decided to NOT PIG OUT today (weigh in day at weight watchers) but to stay w/in my points and get in my water. All of you at WW know that "weigh in" day is cheat day. But not for me today....POSITIVE (check). I am working on my crocheting swap EARLY.....POSITIVE (check). There is only one more week of school left for the kids and although FOOTBALL conditioning will continue taking up TONS of time, I'm ready to spend summer with my kids...POSITIVE (check).

Now any one of these could be LEMONS in my life but ya know what, after the worry, lack of control, and fear I felt for my husband last week....I have decided that this week its all about the LEMON SHAKE. I may rot my teeth out...smiling ear to ear, and even PRETENDING during those BAD moments, but I am gonna do it.

Today I realize that very few people out there will ever understand how I felt last week (thank you all my military friends), but thank you to all of you who TRIED....it means so much to me. Several of my "non-military" friends said that I was strong and that what I am handling amazed them. Ya know what I'm tired of saying "oh its nothing you can do it too." They can do it, and would if they HAD too, but right now I am going to (pat on back here) accept it with grace and say "yep I am strong, and I do have amazing strength." Funny how fearing for your husband in the "EVIL FACE" of DANGER can do that to you. I'm ready to face the week and the world if I have too. But this week I'll be making Lemon Shakes...do you care to join me?

I hate this...

I hate feeling this way, I hate pretending its a good day, when its not. I hate that people can't understand (its not their fault they haven't lived it). I hate that this gets minimized and put in little boxes for everyone else. This is my life, and this week its been WILD. I feel like its so turned upside down. It's not really, I mean its just lonely.

Ya know I have said it before and I'll say it again, its not the big stuff you miss (its not even the sex although that sucks too LOL) it's the little things they do when they are home. He would have mowed the yard this week-end for me while the boys and I were busy running. He would keep KD and wait for Seth to get off the bus while I ran the boys back and forth to the HS for conditioning. Now I can take them all, and I can grab Seth an hour early, but OMG do I miss him.

I miss him more when I know that there is "shit" going on down there and I can't help him. I miss him when I know that "they" get better treatment/protection than the military men/women do. I hate that I have NO CONTROL over any of this...not even my emotions this week.

Yep its all part of the job, and yep it will be over soon, and yep, yep, yep....I swear to you it doesn't make it any better. There truly is NOTHING anyone can say to make me feel like this is FIXED. But I will survive and I will work thru this week like I did the last one, and the one before that. He'll be home sooner than later, and realistically I know that, today it just seem so very far away.

I hope that today you all take one second...just one second to look at your significant other and say or even think "thank you" for loving me and for being here, because when they aren't and you can't say it, its really, really hard...and honestly we all forget to be grateful for our lives. So my challenge to you is (thanks Aaron for reminding me with your note) to find the beauty in your lives and your relationships. Hopfeully tomorrow brings me a few more smiles than today, but I will keep on going...its my job.

Sometimes....

....not knowing is better than actually knowing. This AM Shayne called and said "when it hits the news I'm ok." Of course my first response is what happened...and yep all you military wives know the answer to that and so did I as soon as it came out of my mouth, but of course I got the "I'm fine don't worry about me today." Thats code for "can't tell you" and I know that, but it sucks.

Now part of me is like OMG why did you call, but in watching the news 11 hrs later I got a blip of what happened, and was like "oh damn it." So although I worried and wished I hadn't known all day, if he hadn't had 23 seconds to call and say I'm fine, I'd have been devastated and sick with worry.

So sometimes that no news is good news is a good thing. I miss him so much, and today was tough but he's fine, and I'm fine (tired and need a break) but we keep plowing ahead, and hopefully sooner than later I can "see the light at the end of the tunnel" usually the 1/2 way point it gets harder emotionally but the days "look" like the dwindle quicker. So until then I'll just "go with it."

One day at a time....

.....that's how Shayne is getting thru. At least that was our conversation this AM. He is doing fine, and I know he'll be ok (much better than last week-end). But I heard him this time say "I get thru it one day at a time," and I felt a tug on my heart strings, because that's how I got thru the last one. But this time...although I am still getting thru one day at a time, its been so much easier on me. Like the right now I have 100 things we have to get done before school lets out in two weeks, so although my heart misses him so much and it hurts to breathe with out him here, I don't have time to wallow in it. OMG that sounds heartless, but I can't...I just can't be as "lost and depressed" as I was the last time.

I worry about him and his "mental" state with where he is and the type of "issues" he deals with, but I know he's ok, and every moment he gets thru is one day closer to getting back to us. I can't imagine, nor do I really want too, what it is he is living. But this time he's doing much better being involved in the kids lives, and actually listening to them.

Deployments suck for anyone and everyone, but they are a downfall to the job, and its just that it's a job. We'll see it thru and hopefully on the other side get a couple years uninterrupted before the next one. However deployments have this underlying POSITIVE thing for so many of us, if we can just SEE the END before we get there. For those of us left at home, we can do the IMPROVEMENTS we want, but they hate LOL cause we'll they aren't here LOL. We can pay bills the way we want, we can go to the places they don't like because they aren't here, and we can IMPROVE ourselves. We can look DEEP inside and heal the past problems or short comings that we have and we can be better individuals.

So how you face a deployment makes all the difference in your life. Time goes only so fast, and the emotions run hot and cold every moment of every day, but it doesn't have to be an "end of life as you know it" situation. You can chose to thrive during a deployment and fix yourself and the stuff around you till they come home. And for me, although its TECHNICALLY one day at a time, even one hour at a time. We're a different crew TOGETHER this time...and Shayne well we can't fix it for him, but I can tell you he is so very PROUD of how we are doing, and what we are doing to keep OUR life on the course we picked so many years ago.

Lost....

....in thought most of the time. Some day's its good, some day's its bad, but most of the time, its just what it is. I wished I was a person who could say "OM Gosh this AMAZING epiphany came over me today and I um solved a crisis." But nope I am just an ordinary married woman with kids.

Yesterday was a tough day for me....and I actually can say I had my very first melt down (thank God I was alone on the cell phone with my dear sister in law Terri). Now like every thing so far in military life I survived, and the situation worked itself out. Shayne is fine, the kids are doing fine, and me, well I worked THRU the wall (yep runners sorry it exists in real life too...oh how I remember that 3rd turn back straight a way by the last light post...Thanks dad for always being over there). So here I am on the cusp of a new day (waiting for the sun to come up) and I am reevaluating where I see myself.

Some days I feel like [insert kids' name here] mom, or Shayne's wife, or PTA board member. But I am not always sure who I am. So when Shayne called last night and I got my tears out (whew hate the phone service and deployments), I realized that I am NOT only the above listed, I am me, and that I am a good person. I just need to believe in myself more. I find it amazing that my husband and kids believe more in me than I do most of the time. I gotta ask myself if I've been like this forever or if I ever had the confidence to be who I am? My dear friend Aaron would say I was always too hard on myself and I sold myself short, and looking back I gotta wonder if that's true.

I am on the road to recovery....on a strict WW regime, I am working out (slowly building up), and I am blogging again, and writing (someday I'll be brave enough to TRY and get stuff published...not there yet Melanie I'm trying though) and I am taking care of me. I guess that "baby steps" are the way to go. I have to believe in me, instead of just worrying about everyone else. And when I got the chance to talk to Shayne about this, he was like "honey you can do it." Just a short sentence that was the LIGHT BULB to my THOUGHTS recently. I know I can get thru this deployment, I have before (SSDD) but this time I want to do it with more style and grace than before...and ya know what? I think I might just be heading in that direction.

Have a great Saturday everyone, and remember that life is what you make of it and its short, so LOVE the heck out of it.

Spent a lot of....

....time thinking today. Shayne is gone for this holiday and although we watch the news coverage and say a few silent prayers, we don't do anything monumental for Memorial Day. For our family, we are lucky enough to have our parents and grandparents alive who fought in past wars, but for many people in this country they do not. Today when I was thinking about the history of Memorial Day and the significance of this day to our country, tons of stuff crosses my mind.

As so many men and women are away from their families today (Shayne included) I find my mind to wondering to not only the past as I BELIEVE it should, but to all of them still fighting for our country. Agree or disagree with the direction of our country and the wars we are currently in, that doesn't allow us to FORGET about those BRAVE men and women, or to IGNORE their needs when they get home. It's often said in online banter back an forth that "if you don't agree/support our troops, then get in front of them" well in anger I can actually UNDERSTAND this comment. But here's the twist to why I BELIEVE in our military, no matter how angry people are, or how condemning to them they are when these men and women return home, these BRAVE men and women would NEVER let anyone take their place, much less get in FRONT of them. That's one of the greatest examples of why AMERICA (in all the good and bad) is truly the best country in which to live.

I have a brother-in-law who has been to Iraq three times, and the second time he went, his wife was upset at the hideous comments she heard about the troops and the war. So in one of their phone calls she told him about it, and how repulsed she was. Wanna know what he said or do you already know? He said "honey this is what I am fighting for, so that [people] like them can have their opinions, even if I think they are wrong." So, the next time we want to say something mean, degrading, condescending, or just plain STUPID, lets remember that these men, women, and their families are willing to die for you, and have in years past. So lets agree to disagree about the wars all we want, but lets take a moment as often as we can to CELEBRATE these people and give them our THANKS.