Deployment is...

A new way of walking. A walk that include the patting down of your pockets, to make sure you always have your cell phone, my new pat walk.

Becoming a trained monkey, jumping when the phone rings, turning on the computer to check the email first thing in the morning and before you go to bed, checking the mailbox everyday regardless of if you just got a letter yesterday.

Learning how to do things you never wanted to know how to do. I now know how to snake a toilet, yuck. I know that if our basement garage door won’t shut that I need to press the reset button in my top floor bathroom, even though there is a reset button in the main floor kitchen. Guess how long it took me to figure that one out?

A spider on the inside of your driver’s side window with your kids in the car and you unroll the window grab the thing by the web and throw it out the window.

Developing a love/hate relationship with time and the calendar. Everything is about the milestones. Next is summer break, then that trip to Jenny’s, then Super Saturday, etc. And sometimes it is alright let’s get to bedtime. Right now all milestones lead to R&R, the end of the deployment is too far off to dwell on.

Worrying about having to sleep alone then realizing you shouldn’t have bothered; one of the kids seems to be in his spot every night anyway. They are having nightmares.

Living and dying by your lists, to do, should do, want to do, need to do, need to get, and even in your head, the need to get on the to do list. If it doesn’t get written down you are not going to remember it, a lot gets forgotten

Feeling so frazzled and unfocused that I don’t even feel like myself during those times.

Turning into a mushy cheesy mess. I cry at love songs on the radio that remind me of Dan. The first time I saw the moon some morning after Dan left, I just stopped in my tracks. I must have stared at it for a good minute just goofily thinking about it shining on Dan at that moment. When the guys at Dan’s work razzed him for calling me so much (who would do that?) he told them that he calls his wife in the morning and his best friend at night. They stopped making fun of him and I can’t stop thinking about how he said that about me.

Finding out how to live with yourself and live in your head. And learning how to escape yourself at times. It’s a very solitary place.

Learning that the word “Morale” is not a silly propaganda word to use at the butt of a joke. It is a real tangible feeling in your chest when you miss his call, when he doesn’t call when he normally would have; it’s that feeling of nothing being right until you finally hear his voice.

Discovering that doing two people’s jobs around the house is just about impossible, learning to let go is just about almost as impossible.

Walking the fine line between making goals to keep yourself busy to stay sane and making so many goals that you are going to drive yourself insane.

Finding out you have a crazy amount of independence and are slightly afraid of what will happen when your husband comes home.

Trying to keep your oldest child from becoming a co-parent, because he feels so much responsibility. It is another difficult balance between knowing that you need to expect a little more help from your children and still letting them have a childhood.

Predictably, an emotional rollercoaster. One day, you realize that you are stronger than you thought and that you will be able to handle this and make it through. Another day is a day of walking through sand and you just have to be proud of the fact that the children got fed and you are dressed.

Only like 30% of the way through, oh man.