time flies when you’re oblivious
summer is over, thank all deific entities. It was long, not hot, stress-filled with work drama, lonely, and otherwise super sucktastic. The Kid was a rock star through it all, happy to be hangin’ with the mom, sad to be missing the dad. Even still, thanks to really good friends and really kind family, we made it.
And now, mayhem once again. Fall brings scheduling issues like having to wake up before noon (actually, having any sort of schedule drives me barmy, the whole, “to school by nine” thing is just… dude.) –and also, earlier darkness, more, longer night, and –hmm, lookee there, more loneliness. But amidst that, to get kid to gym, ballet, to make time for my workouts (and ballet) to think of things like Halloween parties and PTA and–oh, yeah, that paying job! — and all kinds of other, shudder-able duties… Bah.
Light at the end of the tunnel: The Man got Christmas time off. He’ll be home for the holidays, and more importantly: the day after Christmas, the Kid’s Birthday. Wheeeeeee! –and yet, gah. I’m dreading it. He’ll come home, we’ll have awkward mushy time. He’ll do lots and lots of fun things with the Kid, who will devastated when he leaves, as it means that her life will, once again, be “just no fun.”
agh. (and on, to life. Kid is planning The Halloween Party to end all Halloween Parties…)
slogging through… 100 days down, 300 to go
slowly, things are becoming doable. Certain things, like fights with the lawn mower, are acts of futility (the last time I attempted to mow, the front wheel came off. Nice.) Other things, like fights with the kid, are also acts of futility, but where the lawn mower’s wheel is a random piece of bad luck, at least I know where the kid is coming from.
I started seeing a counselor, and she suggested I start antidepressants. My doc concurred. I now take Wellbutrin. So far, so good, four days into that. We did our first one hundred days celebration, with a bounce house and lots of friends, and while I was exhausted getting the whole thing together, then running it alone, it was a big success. Or at least, that’s what the guests told me. It seems surreal that he’s been gone 100 days already, though it seems both longer than that and shorter than that.
Our contact has been decent, mostly emails with the odd phone call in there; the fun part is hearing his voice and getting giddy the same way I did when we first started dating. Who knew, twelve years into this relationship, that I could feel some of the same warm fuzzies that I felt so long ago? I think the fact that we have to keep things personal yet superficial is kind of helpful; I want to keep topics light and have fun with my information that I’m giving him, and he’s been going back to the funny, wry guy that he had been up until his day job made him jaded and sometimes assholeish. It seems like the ultimate irony that if you send a guy to war, you can get your old guy back.
I have no illusions that he’ll come back and we’ll have that honeymooney thing going on –I know it’s going to be tough as hell. But won’t it be nice to have help again…
No hugging allowed
Today The Man told me to chill. I said the standard, mmmmhmmm. He said something to the effect of , no, really, I haven’t seen you relaxed in, like, three days. I sort of shrugged him off, especially as he tried to hug me, and recognized truth; I’ve been a cleaning, organizing, dodging fiend, trying to avoid all personal contact that will make me warm, that will make me realize how cold cold can be when he’s gone. It’s getting scary, he’s done the SRP (I call it the shots preparing for overseas thing) and shown me his marks, he’s been upbeat and kind and all I can think is GOD I’m gonna miss him. And so, busy is better. cold is better. disengaged, disconnected, efficient, clean: all good things. For now. We’ll get through this, I’m sure; for now, I need to focus on… Hell, I have no idea wtf I’m focused on (or is it, avoiding anything that is him, love, and the here-and-now, as I know the here and now will be yesterday soon enough.)
so…clean….
my kitchen is freakin’ surgically sound right now. I’ve washed switchplates and switches, outlets, outlet plates, rice, coffee and pasta canisters, cupboards, counters, kickboards, and floors. It’s a classic sign that I’m internally screwy; there’s mucky muck afloat that needs to be cleared, and a clean house–or the process of cleaning it– makes my world happy. Similarly, with him: he did boatloads of dumping, garage cleaning, and manly to-do items, and as he finished the garage, which feels– dare I say it, mausoleum-like?–now, he said, this feels surreal. Guh? Yeah. he’s getting ready to go. This purge-y clean-y stuff cements it.
just five…more…minutes…
In the morning, I’ll lay in bed only half awake after he gets up, and I’ll skooch over to his abandoned warm spot, sprawling my body diagonally over the bed in a delicious show of laziness. He’ll have gone to Starbucks to buy his venti half decaf drip and my grande nonfat latte. When he gets home, he’ll be brusque and grumble about me getting my butt outta’ bed, and I’ll groan, five…more…minutes… I felt like that was the story of Hawaii. I wanted five more minutes in bed, I wanted five more minutes on the island, I wanted five more minutes of unfettered (by reality) family time. But now, we’re in Tacoma, where it’s snowing and sunny (yes, the two can coexist in a weird way) and where the dogs are happy to see us and a pile of mail including orders waits for us to peruse it. And I just want my five more minutes, but the inevitability of it all is just looming there, all… umm… Inevitable.
aloha, Hawaii!
Is it wrong that I keep looking at The Man? He’s silhouetted with The Kid by the ocean, smiling with the sun as a backdrop, resting in a chaise by the pool, and I keep thinking that I need to drink in this moment, to savor every second and then save every millisecond in each crease of my grey matter, in case this is our last trip to Hawaii. I fervently hope we’ll be here again, soon. As a big family get-together. Soon. (did I say, soon?)
…and they’re off…
The Man, (his mom), The Kid, and I are off to Hawaii at the buttcrack of dawn tomorrow. Am I packed? Nope. Kid? Yeah. Him? Yeah. But, see, he’s been home, and chatty, and we’ve been hanging out, and I’ve been neglecting the (paying, albeit from home) day job, and now I’m stressed the fuck out. And yet, I know we’ll have a great time, despite the fact that my own hormonal impairment and his mom’s presence might kill any horizontal romance, and despite the fact that I’m nowhere near ready to go, and I suspect I’ll forget something major, like knickers or shoes, or something. But whatev. It’ll be fun family time, good family time.
a shot with the civilian on his last day
The Man is a classic introvert. He’s not socially inept, he’d just rather, given the opportunity to celebrate or mourn, be alone. I’m an extrovert. Sad thing? Let me call about 17 friends, and email, and blog. Happy thing? Ditto. So there we were today as a family, having dinner with some of my friends, whom The Man realizes could be his friends, too; he likes them, they talk about books, they laugh at his random bits of input. It was good, fun, nice, all sorts of positive words, but The Man was tired. Long commute, rain, long week… he wanted to get home. Home, he lined up the shot glasses. It’s the sort of thing he does when there’s Something Big. Naturally, I’m like the puppy willing to go along with whatever, dude, so I belly up to the counter and he says, “here’s to my last day of work.” We swallow, our eyes water, and the enormity of the toast hits me. Today, he ended his official civilian capacity. His base will be closed with BRAQ (Base Realignment and Closure, to my mind, the government’s way of trying to become “efficient”) and when he returns from Iraq he’ll be, for all intents and purposes, unemployed. Possibly, we’ll have to move to Wisconsin, though he’s gunning for a South Carolina job opening. We’ll worry about that when he gets home in one piece. Tonight, upon reading his tax return, he was depressed, seeing that with a certain amount of upward mobility, comes more tax responsibility. Despite a hefty pay cut, he’ll actually make, as take- home pay, more as a soldier than he was as a civilian. For now, he embarks on a 2 week vacation, at which point we embark on a Hawaiian holiday, and then he gets some training time, and then, more intense training time, and then, deployment. For now, my quandry, do I take Mr Classic Introvert, and throw him a party, bring together all his local friends to hang out and celebrate a time to be together? Or do I just allow him to be, to snuggle our kid, to read her her fairy books, to watch travel channel and old movies? What honors him more, right now?
“but soldiers get killed!”
I was up north for a day of gainful employment, so the mother in-law-ish person kept The Kid overnight. In the morning, THe Kid was in good spirits til it was time to think about school, getting ready for school, going to school. Grandma talked to The Kid about being brave, and verbalized a list of brave people, including daddy, a brave soldier. The Kid said, to grandma, “But soldiers get killed!” (I did not know my kid knew about that stuff yet.) *(but apparently, boys in kindergarten know about that stuff, and are willing to share)
forecast calls for rain and busy…
it’s bleak outside. then again, it’s March in Tacoma; naturally it’s bleak. We’ll get just enough sun to make us excited, and go buy capris, and then, blammo, rain-o. No worries, though, we’re about to head to Maui. Between trip preparations, commitments to The Man’s unit for FRG-stuff, commitments to The Kid’s school for other stuff, work, and life, I’m starting to get busy, and I’m starting to stack up my life so that it’s busy, busy busy, cubed, when he’s gone. Hopefully, I won’t think about stuff so much…
