Back from the Dead

I hardly ever get sick. Injured, yes…probably more than most people, in fact. But sick, almost never. And it’s a pretty darn good thing that I don’t, because when it happens, it is always horrible. I power through injuries with the best of them. When I get sick, though, I turn into the biggest baby you’ve ever seen. But in my defense, I’m never whining about just a head cold.

This past week, I was laid out with the holy grail of sinus infections. What started out as tickle in my throat became a horrible monster that gave me an infection in every orifice of my head. Seriously, the doctor shined the little doctor light in all the appropriate places and said things like “oh my” and “oh dear” and “poor momma.” In general, these are not things you want to hear your doctor say about your face holes. When she was done, she said something like, “I think you just earned yourself a couple of antibiotics.” She went on and on after that about how the medicine would cause drainage that might make me feel worse before I felt better, but I wasn’t listening to her as much as I was trying not to pop what I could only guess was a giant bubble that was blowing up inside of my ear. Afterwards, my body carried my floating balloon head to the pharmacy where I somehow managed to grab my prescriptions and drive me and my baby boy back to the house in the rain…which I have to figure was about ten times more dangerous than texting while driving.

I walked in the door and popped all my pills as instructed on the packaging, and then HELP.ME.JESUS. I laid there like a sack of potatoes. My entire face puffed up like it had been stung by bees, but really it was just the nastiness unclogging itself from my innards. My ear bubble popped. A migraine mounted from the building pressure. I became nauseous from the stuff draining out of my chest. Tears and other liquids streamed uncontrollably out of my face. Yeah…gross. I promise you I have seen more attractive people featured in the “Sexy and I Know It” Wal-Mart video on YouTube.

Meanwhile, my son skipped tra-la-la through the house like I wasn’t in the worst pain of my life. I have no clue what he was doing all day. For all I know, there could have been wild animals scurrying around our house. It wouldn’t have made a difference. I wasn’t lifting my beeface one inch. “Mommy, I’m hungry,” he told me at some point around noon… or two. Heck, I didn’t know. I managed to dump some dry cereal in a bowl with a piece of Kraft Single cheese next to it. Bon Appetit.

It has become basic practice of mine not to call my husband home from work unless someone is dying. Well, I sure felt like I was. And now realizing how dangerous it had been driving the car before my head sprung a leak, I figured I really should avoid handling heavy machinery now. I sent the man a text: Please pick up kid #1 from school. Not ten minutes later, he came through the door like one of the heroes in a movie. I swear I heard triumphant music playing as he laid his gear down at the front door. He picked up the girl from school, taking the boy with him. He then took them all to our daughter’s dance class and out to eat for dinner, all after bringing me chicken soup from Panera Bread and setting me up with a season of Glee. Oh, sweet victory…

For like an hour.
After laying on the couch for about a week, I had begun hating the thought of lying on the couch alone. Not wanting anyone to touch me and catch my crusty germs, but desperately missing their cuddles. Knowing I needed to go to bed early at night to heal, but hating missing bedtime stories and a chance to hang out with my husband at night. Enjoying the break from doing the dishes and laundry, but feeling guilty that my superhero husband was getting stuck with all the dirty jobs. I missed my family. I missed my life.

I guess I have been struggling with a case of inferiority lately. Being a stay-at-home mom is certainly rewarding, but I will be the first to tell you that there is much more work to do in the early years than there is when children grow into the preschool years and beyond. I have fiercely independent children to boot, so not only do they not need me as much anymore, but sometimes they don’t even really want me. Lately, (and as evidenced by my last downer of a blog) I have been incredibly bored. A little empty, even. I missed the feeling of accomplishment I got from a day’s work, and I wasn’t feeling like I was accomplishing a whole lot here.

Leave it to a sinus infection to make me realize how naïve that feeling really was. Lying on the couch completely helpless made me think of all the things I couldn’t wait to get up and do again. Things like driving my baby girl to and from school and talking to her about her day, and her new friends, and how exciting it was when that one kid from her school stuck a button up his nose. Fixing her hair for ballet practice and watching her through the window without her knowing, beaming at her as she does her toe taps that I see her practicing privately in her room sometimes. Playing video games and computer games with my little man, in awe that he already knows how to manipulate technology so much better than I do. Going down slides with him at the park and watching him learn how to ride his tricycle in the middle of the afternoon on a Tuesday. Giving high fives and “knuckles” when he does a good job on the potty, even if that means going into the customer service restroom at the grocery store three times in a single trip. Making my husband supper and sitting down all together at the table to eat…something that we definitely did not get to do often enough at the last duty station. Making homebrew with him at night and growing into a new hobby together. Checking on our babies together every night and kissing them one last time as they sleep.

I’ve got a lot going on for myself here. A beautiful, happy life and a big job that needs to get done. The most important job…the one where you grow a family.

I am happy to report that though I am not operating at 100%, it is currently safe for me to drive a car. So I can pick up my baby girl from school today and hear about how so-and-so ate a bug at recess. And I have been asked by little man to play a game of Sorry after lunch, which I happily agreed to do. I think I will even initiate a random tickle fight at some point today. Because those are the things that my job entails. Because those are the things worth living for.

Writer's Block

I can't believe this is my first blog in nearly two months. That is insane to me.

This is the longest I've ever gone between blogs. It wasn't because I didn't have an opportunity to write...I only went a grand total of five days without Internet during the move.
It wasn't because I didn't try to write...I actually started a post about my resolutions results and got about two minutes into it before running out of steam.
About three days later, I returned to the post just long enough to decide it was crappy and I wasn't going to finish it.
It wasn't even because I was too busy to write...so many days I have spent bored out of my mind looking for something to do here. Writing would have made for a pretty sweet escape.

No, I haven't written because I'm lost.

I am lost in the woods, yes. Though my last name, my accent, my love for rustic home furnishings, and my husband may have led people to believe otherwise, I am not--I repeat, I AM NOT--a small town country girl. I have never in my life lived anywhere without a mall or a Super Target. I have never in my life lived anywhere that has only one Starbucks (inside of a grocery store, to boot.) And I have never in my life lived anywhere with only two McDonald's--neither with functioning playlands. (Though the latter was not nearly as important to me until recently.)

But more specifically, I am lost because I am still trying to figure out who I am going to be here. I had this master plan to become "Suzie Homemaker" when I moved here. I knew that our time here would be brief, but I figured I could make the most of it cooking these delicious meals, decorating the new house, and planning all kinds of creative activities for the family. Turns out, I do not know how to cook on an electric gas range and burnt my first three suppers right out the gate. I was so overly excited to decorate the new house that I finished most of it the first week. And my son is so tired of arts and crafts that he won't even pick up a crayon anymore.
Apparently Suzie Homemaker will be better saved for another duty station.
So I can't be something new here, but what's worse is I feel like I can't be who I was before, either. It is too cold to run regularly here right now. (I have also learned that running in the ozarks is MUCH more challenging than running in the pass. Stupid, beautiful, wooded hills.) I have no friends to chipper up our otherwise quiet afternoons. I have no oldest child to care for the majority of the work week, which makes my quiet days even quieter. I have no organizational involvements. No clubs. No groups. No life. (No wonder I've had nothing to blog about!)

So here I sit with nothing to say. Hoping that something happens to spark some inspiration. Hoping that I learn to like my new church as much as my last one. Hoping that I'll make a friend, somehow, somewhere. Hoping that this place really is the playground I think it will be for us in the summertime when the ground thaws. Hoping that country music is right, and that small town living really is the best kind of living. Hoping that I find myself here.

Moving On Up

My apologies. I haven't posted in a really long time, because I am currently involved in the craziness that is the Army PCS (Permanent Change of Station--for all who are not hip to my random acronymns.)

As I have been preparing for our move these past several weeks, I have uncovered a few fun facts:

1. There is no amount of prep work you can do to protect yourself from the chaos that is moving day. You will know for weeks that a move is on the horizon, but your official paperwork will not be signed until it all comes down to the wire. Consider it the "Murphy's Law of Moving."

2. There will never be enough time for goodbyes. All at once, your paperwork is processed and movers are scheduled to come in a week. All of the little jobs you were doing to "help with the move" are forgotten as you widly fling things into your husband's garage and try to pencil in as many coffee dates as you can into the next seven days.

3. Moves become substantially more difficult when you have A) a child in school and B) a dog. You start to worry if it will ever be possible to find a house with a fenced backyard that is in a reputible school district. You start to wonder why you constantly pay $350 pet deposits for a dog you only paid $100 for. You start to wonder how much your child actally needs a kindergarten education.

4. The biggest jobs are the last to get done. You are doing things, just not important things. I might not sort through and properly file my legal documents before the move, but I will sort through and organize my ribbon drawer. I might not compose the case study for my certification that I need to complete in the midst of this move, but I will write this blog :)

5. Things you've waited on for months will come together just in time for you to leave them. The restaurant you have anxiously watched being built will open a few short weeks after you're gone. The jalepeno plant that you planted in March will just now begin producing peppers. The dance recital your daughter has worked on for the past three months is scheduled for 8 days after you leave.

6. You have WAY more crap in your house than you think you do. I have spent every free minute of the last two weeks sorting through rooms in our house and making a yard sale pile in my husband's garage. You can no longer walk through the garage, and it didn't make an ounce of difference in the house.

7. You have WAY more food in your house than you think you do. I go to the grocery store about once a week because we are "out of food." Now that I am trying to use up my pantry/freezer odds and ends that can't move with us, I've realized that I always have enough food left over at the end of the week to host a small dinner party and a cookie exchange. I also discovered that I might be a contender for the next Iron Chef America...as long as the secret ingredient is spaghetti sauce.

8. You will get sentimental about things you wouldn't expect. I fully admit that I was less than excited when I learned that we were going to be moving to our current duty station. And I am pretty sure that I cried for about two weeks straight after I got here. But somewhere in the last 3+ years, this place has become my home. I am going to miss the rugged desert mountains. I am going to miss the amazing sunsets. I am going to miss the mild winters. I am going to miss my delicious Mexican food. I am going to miss the house that I watched my youngest child learn to walk in/run around. I am going to miss the playground where my oldest child learned to cross the monkey bars. I am going to miss the crazy half-wall in the front of my house that displays our family portraits. And of course, I will miss the people.

9. You will always worry about what lies ahead. Moving is certainly an adventure-a chance for a new beginning. But it is also a blank slate, and starting over gets scarier the older you get. There is always fear of the unknown---Will I like it there? Will we find a good house? Will my kids adjust quickly? Is my husband going to like his new job? Is my husband moving into a deployable unit? Will I be able to find work? Will I be able to make friends as great as the ones I am leaving?---Though I am still relatively new to this Army Wife gig, I am guessing this part is something that never gets easier and never goes away.

10. You will always be grateful for how far you've come. Every time we move forward, I get to reminisce on where we started. For us, it was a college town in a 2 bed/1 bath "house" with a baby. Everyone starts out with nothing, but we are not exaggerating when we talk about what little we had: two lawn chairs, a small television on a milk crate, a desktop on a busted card table, four warped plastic plates, an end table that we can now only assume was given to us from an abandoned crack house (we will save that one for another blog,) and a dresser that we did not have to pay sales tax on if we did not need a receipt. (So fancy.) Now I sit in a house that is so fully furnished, the movers questioned our initial weight quote. (My husband's collection of barbeque pits, cast iron cookware, and gun cases will do that.)
I've heard it preached that if you are worthy with little, the Lord will bless you with much. I believe that. We took our crack table and milk crates and did our best to turn it into a home for our little family. Now our accumulation of furniture has grown. Our family has grown. Our responsibilities have grown. Our aspirations have grown. And our love has grown.

I am blessed beyond measure with the life I've been given, and I can't wait to continue building our life in our next homes... Wherever in the world they happen to be.