Let me start this post with this will be a mashing of many ideas and stories all in one. The last month has been a wild ride, and I will try to give you a little glimpse.
First, we are over a month in. The first two weeks I found myself contemplating the silence. The calmness. How regular the routine seemed after what I felt like was a HUGE jolt. Contemplating in a way that may have felt and looked very much like a pity party every night after 8pm. This was the time that Jacob and I would normally decompress, make plans for the next day, and really connect. Now after the kids went to bed, the house was a whole lot of quiet. For the first few weeks the amount of time that stood in front of us seems unfathomable. So much so I felt my brain was unable to comprehend it. It felt so overwhelming.
Then in weeks 3 and 4 I wasn't so upset with the quietness. I harnessed my amazing ability of creating tasks, and accompanying timelines, and I vowed to use the after-kids-are-in-bed time to be "productive". I found a new sense of identity in completing tasks. But that tired quickly. I wasn't really processing the time that I would have to get through before we would feel "normal" again, I was actively ignoring those feeling, and shoving them to the side I know now I was lulling myself into a false sense of I-can-will-the-Army-to-follow-my-timeline sort of thought. I felt confident by living in denial my well thought out plan would surely be communicated the next time I heard from J. I think you all know how that turned out.
Because reality did finally show up. During one of the more recent conversations my heart was torn a bit when I was told he would not be home for a concert I really wanted to attend with him. The realization of this was hard, even though if I were honest with myself I knew it. I was just ignoring it as to not move through the emotional phases. I am sure this is a survival tactic of some kind. I will say reality still hurts, but it will work out best to actually be dealing with facts, and not make believe notions believing in something false and then having to deal with the let down just a while down the road.
Now a month in I do feel like I can think a little clearer. Jacob has a new schedule and although it is hard to mesh with ours, we are doing a bit better each day. I remind myself often that technology is amazing, and to think back on his first deployment where we would wait days to hear from him and he was using a pay phone with a prepaid card. Now we can communicate at lot easier than that.
The deployment murphy law has been kinder than in the past. I have struggled getting all household, children, work, and personal tasks completed within the confines of open business hours, but I would give myself about a 90%. We have only sprung one plumbing leak. I caught it fast, and as I type I am awaiting the plumbers, for what I am really hoping is a quick fix. The dryer has some strange error, but seems to be drying fine, and the internet says to just reset the dryer and it will fix itself... I will get around to it. The kids got hair cuts, we waited longer than we should have, but it got done. Oh, and I got the bike hitch off the top shelf in the garage (read way over my head even as I stood on the 7 foot ladder), all by myself, and did not chip a nail. And only one pet has been sick and needed vet care, if you don't count the hamster that just passed, because that one didn't need vet care if you get what I mean.
I will leave you all with a little story. This week when it seemed like EVERY task was taking about 5 times longer than it should, and more and more tasks were being thrown at me, J sent me a selfie with a camel.
I wrote back (while stuck in traffic for the 3rd day in a row)
"Here I am just trying to survive, and you are taking selfies with a camel?!?!"
There has to be some kind of irony there.
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