Ugly Truths

How to quickly sum up the last couple of days?  Hmm...well let's see...let's start with the casualties first: a broken chair, a busted weed whacker and a temperamental lawn mower.  The chair I will take full responsibility for. The other two...they are just being a pain in the ass.

We'll start with the yardwork items and work our way up to the good stuff.  Yeah, yeah two more tools have bitten the dust.  I'm not sure what I did to piss off the lawn god somewhere along the line but someone is ticked at me.  The weed whacker started acting up last week and I admit that after 30 minutes of struggling with it in supressing heat, my temper flared up and I busted the gas tank off. Hey, don't start on me though--I got it back on. Good as new (well almost anyway). But it still wouldn't stay on. It starts but just putters out.  I was over it.  This week, after giving it 7 whole days to rest, I tried again. Nothing.  Fantastic.  I pulled out the push mower and did as close to all edges as I could and use a gloved hand to yank out tall grass along other areas.  A gloved hand. For God's sakes...I am anal about my landscaping, ain't I?  Anal or dedicated. Not sure which.

So once the front was done, I moved along to the back.  My ride on, thank goodness, is still working but to do the property behind our fence, I need the push mower. I went to start it up and what do you know? It kept cutting off.  Enter curse words of your choosing here and then listen for the psychotic laughter. What else could I do, really? It was almost comical at this point.  I walked away. Because that's all I could do in the end.  I might be lifting weights but I'm not about to pick up and throw a lawn mower. Even I have a little more sense than that. Besides, Matt asked me to, "Please, stop breaking his shit." <end quote>

I have informed Matt that a new weed whacker is being purchased. The lawn mower he can deal with when he comes home. I'll borrow one every other week to maintain behind the fence.  But the weed whacker? I've never liked ours. It's very testy and heavy.  Momma wants a new one.  So we'll have his and her weed whackers. How darling.

I have found, amidst all this god foresaken yardwork, that my lovely lil muscular skeletal disorder is kicking in again. It sounds a little more extreme than it is really.  Don't you love how proper medical terms make things sound so severe? I was diagnosed when I was a little older than Jules. I don't remember much other than a lot of tests and a lot of pain. Out of nowhere, a sharp stabbing pain would assault the area around my heart. Although sometimes it likes to switch things up and stab me around my right lung. Either way, it made breathing very painful-like someone driving a knife into me with each breath (well I can only assume that is what it would feel like anyway).  Usually it was brief in duration. And I actually caught a break for several years until I was pregnant with Alyssa and the pain would last for days at a time.  It hasn't been bad until recently. Now it's been hitting regularily when I run (which is normally every other day) or when I do a lot of strenuous yardwork.  It makes it so I can't take a deep breath without cursing. I've retrained myself to breathe shallow again--something I had not done since my teen years. It's one of things not many people--other than Matt and my parents--really know about because I just don't see a point in advertising it. I've never let it stop me from doing things, so why share? But I tell ya, it's a bitch to deal with and a little discouraging to know there is nothing medically that can be done. It is what it is.  It makes a lawn service crew sound more appealing though.

So the chair. You're wondering, aren't you?  Ok, look, this one I wasn't even going to admit because it shows total lack of control on my part. It shows I am cracking. It shows that no matter how much people claim I am doing a good job, that I really do have my moments of being a crap mom.  One of my goals in keeping this blog and sharing everything from funny to sad to embarrasing is to hopefully give people an inside glimpse of not just my life but our life as a military family.  And let's face it. It's not all pretty. It's not all sweet sentiments in emails sent from thousands of miles away. It's not just about receiving flowers one day out of the blue because email went down.  It's not about having some time to focus on one's self and using it to rediscover old beloved hobbies or start new ones.  And it's certainly not all about that one glorious day that marks the end--when the 200+ days of hell seem almost worth it and you are thrust into the pure bliss of reunion.   More often than that, it's about the dirty, unpleasant, and emotional aspects.  It's about slowly becoming a person you no longer recogonize because you are pushed to your absolute limits. It's about being wonderfully numb one second and then a raving lunatic the next.  It's about not caring if you have to fast forward through days in your kids' lives as long as it means reaching that day of reunion a little faster.  You know you should feel guilty for that, but you don't.  Life loses so much of its meaning when you are forced to be separated so you find the desperation to reach the end of that overwhelming.  It's also about realizing that daily life is almost too much to handle let alone anything more than that.  Throw in a variable--something small like a broken lawn mower--and you find yourself cracking.  And finally it's about seeing how the people in your life measure up. Some will pleasantly surprise you while others are a crushing let down. You find out who has the strength, the love and the loyality to stick by you not during just the first week or month but through the whole damn messy deployment.  The ones that will suffer your wrath and bitchiness but still manage to call you anyway. The ones that know you have nothing nice and cheerful to say but still want to be around you anyway.  The ones that, no matter what they are drowning in within their own lives, still find the chance to check in with you. Deployments test many, many aspects in life from the strength of your own marriage and friendships or relationships with family to your own inner strength.  The moto may be "See the world!" but it's "Let's see what you are made of...."  that rings closer to the truth.

That was one hell of a rambling lead in-my apologies. Let's get back to that chair.  A pink wooden princess chair. Tiny and made for small children. It had three of Disney's most beloved royalty painted on it and it was a source of competition and argument in our household. We only have one you see and we have two butts tiny enough to fit in it. Alyssa's and Madilyn's. Day in and day out, I hear the arguments of whose lil ass will be sitting in that chair. They pinch, hit, scream yell...which means I threaten and hiss and yell back.  I've removed the chair, I've given alloted times for that chair.  I had tried everything. 

Yesterday morning was not a good one. I found myself part numb, part angry, part depressed.  Basically I was a level 9 out of 10 and momma's lid was about to blow.  It wasn't even 10am..hell not even 9:30am when the fighting was reaching alarming levels between the girls.  When the fighting finally came around to be focused on that damn princess chair, I snapped.  That was it. Enough.  I can take no more of this utter b.s.  Long story made short? The chair is now in a million pieces and in the trash. Beyond repair.  I will no longer hear that particular argument.  And sadly, I was actually somewhat proud that during my moment of explosion, I did not focus my anger on the kids.  They remained untouched and hell, I threw the chair away from them, not at them. I deserve some credit for that, don't I?

That is, sadly, only one shining example of how my strength is now rapidly fading and I am becoming a ghost of who I once was. 

And before you go there, dear Lord don't tell me "Atleast it's almost over".  Just don't. I'm in too foul a mood at this point in this deployment to have that be any kind of comfort. Because yeah, he will be home in under 2 months now, but let's be truthful--he will leave again. It's just a matter of time.  And if we're lucky, it'll only be another 7 monther and not a year. 

And yeah, as I always says--no one put a gun to our heads, we chose this life. But that doesn't mean it makes it any less shitty, does it?

All of this--this entry and any of the past ones I've written in that last several months--only shows, really, my side of things.  I do realize that is short sighted of me. Matt lives a daily hell that is my life times three.  I have not failed to realize that and I do have plans to touch upon his side of things from what he has told me. Civilians seem well aware that families are separated and wives struggle at home but sometimes are very ignorant as to what the military member actually endures--even one on a ship (which admittedly is nothing compared the hell of a tent in the middle of a desert with nothing more than sheer fabric and some strong vaccinations standing between them and obnoxiously huge critters of the night).  In short, Matt has given up almost every freedom we here at home take for granted just to enable the rest of us to keep ours.  But again, that is a post for another day--when I don't have three kids fighting in the next room, distracting me.

So there you have it. Long, drawn out and very unpleasant. I do understand why the people that have up and pretty much disappeared have done so to be honest.  It's always easier to turn your back on the unpleasantries in life than to embrace them.  In truth, things are worse now than they were before even though we are nearing the end. Maybe it's because we know damn right well we'll have to do this all again--a few times over. Maybe it's because Dear God, it's just been so long.  Or maybe its because once you start to lose yourself and your control, it's all that much harder to keep a grasp on things.  I always joked that I was proud that I got out of bed and fed my kids.  At this point, I am no longer joking.  It's a feat to be accomplished all on its own.  I am actually expected to make a trip to NJ next week and although it sounds pathetic and weak, I am unsure if that will happen. It seems too great a challenge and simply unfathomable at this point. To pack up the kids and puking dog, to make the trip, shuffle ourselves constantly between family's homes, packing and unpacking...to travel through the state making stops along the way, to make our way back here and catch up on bills and yardwork and housework..oh hell, who am I kidding? It threatens to break the last thread of my precious sanity.  It remains unseen whether I'll be strong enough to risk it or not.

Eh, I was going to throw in here how I managed to take the kids to see the second Night at the Museum movie the other day--Madilyn's first trip to the movies--but it seems completely and utterly out of place in this entry so I'll leave it out for now.  What is there to say anyway other than the girls had a great time, the movie wasn't too suckish, I had to steal from their college accounts to buy the tickets and food and the theater was colder than a meat locker?

Hopefully my next entry will be something a little more pleasant--but for now, the truth needed to be written so there it is. Ugly or not, there it is. Life is kinda sucky right now and it takes all my strength not to be sucked under with it like a sinking ship.