Are you listening?

I made my first big-ish ham today, for the Easter holiday.

We both agreed that we wished we were by our families for the holidays... this was the first big holiday where we didn't see mine or his. And the first one where Auralia might have had fun getting Easter baskets and hunting eggs with family. She had to live with one Easter basket, a package from Oma and Opa, and such...shared with Tuck.

I thought about painting...but just can't find the mood to do it.

We've thought about re-enlisting for Colorado... How many of you will say, "That's just because you want to be by your family." ?

How many of you would rather us not re-enlist and just go back to Colorado and try to find jobs, try to find babysitters and such?

We want his degree and we'd rather the military pay for it. We want to be by the companies that he might want to work for once he has his degree. We want sun and snow and rain. And just in case he is deployed again in the next couple years..yes, I'd rather be by our family.. ..Because I know that if I was away, and he was deployed, they'd just come and pack me up and bring me back to them anyway.

It's who we are.

A Military Home has been published, it was written in about half an hour, the night before it was due to ENG 101. And in A Military Home there are a lot of things I wrote that are true, completely true. But now that I've lived here.. I know that there's a lot of things I didn't, and really..couldn't have..known then.

A military home...changes. Adapts. It doesn't just wait because it is too fluid to wait. It waits with hope, and love, and tolerance.

How many families have lived in the house I live in now? Who tried to bang pictures into the walls just as I have?..it's damn near impossible. Who tried to grow flowers in the yard, and who would ever install a towel hook right by the toilet? Who brought new babies here, who went through deployments and redepoyments here?

How many people hoped for better?

We don't wait. We plan. We think and re-think every option, every plan, every thing that might be an opportunity. We're not naive, and both of us are fairly smart...we're thinking ten, twenty, thirty years down the road, not one or three.

Sometimes I feel like you're not really listening.

The Things We Carry

I carry a past, not the people in the memories but the memories nonetheless. Secrets, some whispered and some screamed and most of them are not mine.

I carry my child. In every way possible I carry her and there are times when my arms and my heart burn from it. I get to carry all my love and hope and dreams for her, the burp cloths and the diaper bag.
And because of her I carry a future better then I ever could've imagined.

I carry an endless supply of cleaning supplies, including but not limited to: brooms, vacuums, Swiffers (wet and dry) polish, window cleaner, a whole arsenal of lysol products, Mr Clean Magic Erasers, Febreeze, and lets not forget the ever-present carpet cleaner. I wield these things daily.

I also get the joy of carrying pencils and paper, keyboard and printer. Grocery lists, bills, receipts, and budgets. All with the hope that someday there will be more of some and less of others.

I carry parts and pieces of my family. I can feel their pain and their joy, patience, and frustrations. Sometimes I can feel them reaching out across the miles to try to hold my hand. For them and for me, I carry them.

I carry my tattoos. I'm trying to make the world a more colorful place, one inch of skin at a time. With them, I remember who I was, what I believe in, what I needed, what I wanted, who I wanted to be at different places in my life. I carry them so at times when I can't remember my strength, I can look down and remember that's it somewhere inside of me.

I carry fear. And sometimes that fears sneaks up on me, reminds me that I am human and that there are alligators everywhere. I am a woman, a mother, a wife, a military spouse, and I know fear. But more, I know courage.

I carry a razor that I use, maybe once a week..if I remember. A makeup bag full of goodies that sadly is most of the time ignored. A whole lot of unbelievably pretty shoes that I haven't worn in over a year. I carry a disdain for hair curlers, a love for tweezers, and complete adoration for my hair straightener. 

I carry all I feel for my husband. The understanding that I love someone completely unlike me and that I still have no knowledge of how it works out as well as it does. I carry the apologies that I sometimes forget to say and the guilt that ensues when I have said something wrong. I carry the hope for our future and our child's future. I get to carry my support for him. I carry his fears and doubts that bind with mine just as our future is bound. I get to share the weight of deployment, redeployment, transition, and the fear for our friends and family going through the same things.

I carry my dreams.  Our dreams. Not that the world will be a better place really, but that we'll be able to make our place in the world; a place where we can feel safe, content, and where we can keep dreaming. Where we can teach our babies what it's like to have dreams, how to make some come true, how to let go of others and how to decide, how to work those dreams.

Writing Again

It's been more than 7 months since I've sat down with my thoughts and a keyboard and tried to let everything flow out... so this blog might be a little redundant and a little boring.

We just PCS'd to Washington state, and wow... living on post is completely different then I thought it would be. There are less friendly people, more larger then life people, and a lot more screaming children then I thought there would be. When I thought about living on a post (finally) after 2 years of living off post and away from my husband, I thought there would be more a sense of community, and of understanding. Perhaps you have to jump through hoops that the fellow milspouses put up to become part of this community. Maybe it's just this housing community. Or perhaps I'm not trying hard enough yet to find my niche here.


My baby turned 7 months old a few days ago. She's a constant amazement to me. My personality with her dad's looks... oh man.

Being away from home... meaning my old home where my family and friends live... hasn't been as hard as I think they wanted it to be. I do miss them, I miss driving somewhere and not getting lost, I miss having some one to babysit if I need an hour to just breathe. But I wanted to be away from them and from the things I knew there. I needed to be with my husband again after a year long training stint and then him going straight to Iraq, leaving me 9 weeks pregnant and dazed. I don't think anyone except for him ever knew how hard that was for me. I don't think I ever let any one try to understand.

 Perhaps that's the pride of a military spouse. Taking pride in their suffering and their strength. Conveniently brushing off all those friends and family members who wish they could help you. I think we're very good at closing ourselves in, or at least our true feelings in and only projecting small bits of our joy or pain or whatever, just because we relish in the fact that the majority of people (meaning civilians) wouldn't be able to handle the lives that we live. Not true? I dunno..