Barnmaven

No.

It was a subtle regression, from broken but hopeful to just broken.

I was doing all of the things I believe a good patient is supposed to -- following up with my doctors, diligently going to physical therapy,  communicating with my doctors.  I trusted my doctors to be actively concerned for my well-being, to understand the limitations being imposed on me by the pain in my hip and legs and to actively seek solutions to restore quality of life. 

Months of doctor's visits.  X Rays and MRI's, injections and physical therapy.  I'm still in pain.

The hip doctor sent me to the spine doctor who sent me back to the hip doctor who still insists he can't help me.

Constant pain will wear you down.  I suppose I was naive to believe that I could maintain a positive demeanor despite my circumstances.   Maybe I just didn't try hard enough.  Maybe I wasn't accepting enough.  Maybe acceptance wasn't the answer.

I hadn't factored in the impact of my extreme loneliness on my ability to both cope with my pain and be patient within the process of finding solutions.  Solitude can be gratifying.  It can bring great personal growth.  It can clear your mind and soul, bring you back to your center.

Solitude can also be incredibly painful.  He has been gone for such a long time.

What do I miss the most?  Touch.  I crave the sensation of his hand pressed into the small of my back, placed on my shoulder or stroking my hair.  I miss the passing hug, feeling his arm slide around my waist as I walk past, turning into his shoulder and resting my head there.  As my pain increased my solitude became crippling.  My life has compressed to nearly intolerable levels.  I can get to and from work.  Driving isn't as excrucitating as it was before the lumbar injections; I ask people to come to my office for meetings and only deal with stairs and long walks when I can't avoid them, chin up and get through it when I can't.   Evenings are mostly OK.  I can get dinner on the table and not do much until its time to do barn chores.  I hurt after that, but I can go to bed and wake up with only a slight limp.

Weekends are what really get to me.  I always had so many things to look forward to - a ride, time with my kids, parents, friends, husband.  Shopping, going out, working on projects.  

Not any more.

I carefully choose my activities.  If I need to do housework I pick the biggest priority.  It can't be on the same day I go to the grocery store.  If I do too much in one day I pay for it for hours.  

I never expected this to happen to me.  I suppose no one does, really.  

I refuse to accept that this is my life.

Thank God I've got good insurance.

 

 

Extremes and the going to of them

The perfect relationship.  The perfect mate.  The perfect marriage.

SG and I on our wedding day, Nov 2011

 Do these things exist?  Perhaps they are merely chimeras that distract us from the more distressing realities of adult relationships.  When people are ready to discard the fairy tale and acknowledge that relationships are messy and hard and not as constantly satisfying as the diamond sellers' commercials would have us believe, they are faced with the daunting task of sifting through their relationships past and present.  Eventually you have to pick a place to stand, and if the fairytale is the only genre you wish to attach to your relationship, likely you will end up standing alone.  

This is not my "perfect relationship."  In my perfect relationship, my partner and I get to be both together and apart in relatively equal portions.  We nearly always have the opportunity to express our affection in ways that feel good - hugs and kisses, holding hands, a neckrub at the end of a hard day.  When we're apart it is only for long enough to remind us to appreciate each other's presence.  

I find myself continually needing to relearn the lesson of letting go of "perfect" and being happy with what I have.  Some days it is easier than others.  On this Valentine's Day it is particularly challenging.

I find the most difficult part of being married to someone who works for long periods on the road is getting used to being a ping pong ball flying between paddles labeled ALL and NOTHING.  When he's home, he's home 24/7.  When he leaves, I'm on my own.  

When he's home, he wants to help with everything.  I don't know if that's just that he is a person who gains pleasure from doing all that he can for the people he loves or if he's assuaging some level of guilt over not having been able to be physically present, but my husband doesn't want me to have to do much when he's around.  Like every couple we each have our preferences for the kind of chores we prefer to be stuck with, but even if there are few tasks I usually end up doing, he carries the bulk of it.  Meals, laundry, dishes, dogs, getting kids out the door to school.  I had to beg him to stop feeding my horses so that I would be able to have a chance to see them every evening.  In the mornings all I'm responsible for is getting myself out the door.  I come home in the evening and if he hasn't already got dinner on the table he suggests we order something; never does he expect me to come home from work and cook.  He picks up things he knows I like at the grocery store.  I'm spoiled rotten and I know it. 

When SG is gone, I build my own routine.  My days, while lonely, have a comforting rythym.  I am much more disciplined with my time when I am the only one home to tend to things - dishes and laundry get done, things get picked up, meals get made and animals get fed.  There isn't much wiggle room for lollygagging in the morning, so I quickly learn to be efficient and not play so many games on my phone while I'm eating breakfast.  The kids and I turn into a cozy little team.  I involve them in the decision making a little more, we have more one on one time.  I try to find things to depend upon them for so that they learn to be dependable.  I remember to appreciate not only how spoiled I am by my husband but to be appreciative of my independence and ability to take care of things on my own.

Usually it feels like I've no sooner gotten into the swing of my routine when my husband returns.  It is a period of adjustment for both of us -he's been on the road with only his own needs to tend to.  We've both gotten used to having time to ourselves.  Its really hard for me, I think harder because at least SG gets a break from people while I'm at work.  I, on the other hand, spend almost no time alone in my own home.  Between mid-December and yesterday the longest I was alone in my house was one Sunday when SG went to church and I didn't want to go.  

But when he's gone, the loneliness can get unbearably difficult.  There is an ocean of difference between being alone by choice and being alone because you can't be with the people you love.  When the kids are also gone, the first few hours feel like heaven and the rest of the time feels like punishment. 

No, this is not easy.  

But -

I'm not alone because my husband doesn't want to be with me.  He's just as lonely as I am when he goes on the road, at least once he gets beyond those first heady days of enjoying his solitude.  He misses those hugs and date nights just as much as I.  If it were up to me I might not have picked a career on the road for my husband, but isn't my choice to make.   I might be happier if he were here, but when he had a less-than-satisfying job that kept him home, he was really miserable.  I'd far rather have a partner who feels good about his work and his contribution to our family than one who is miserable and angry and feeling trapped.  

I know there are people right now who would be thrilled to have a two-income household even it meant their partner had to be somewhere else for a little while.   So I'll take my first-world problems and I'll remind myself to continue to find positives so that maybe the bad days won't roll around so often.

However --

Valentine's Day can seriously kiss my first-world ass this year.

Brrrr!

I'm counting my blessings this freezing cold afternoon in December.  It read 13F on the outside thermometer when I left for work this morning.  

We've been in a deep freeze since the beginning of the week, and last night was the worst so far with the wind bringing the temperature down below 0F overnight.  

The dogs go out and do their business and don't linger in the yard to bark at the neighbors as is their usual pattern.  People ask me about the horses, but they really are fine so long as they have plenty of hay to munch throughout the day to keep their calorie intake up.  They all look like overly large Shetland ponies this year, with deep, fluffly winter coats.  We keep the heater on in their water tank night and day and salt it so they will be encouraged to drink plenty of water.  With all the hay working its way through their systems they must stay hydrated or risk colic. 

We haven't had much of anything in the way of snow so far.  A mild dusting on Monday morning that blew away before I left work to head back home.  I have the occasional fleeting thought that it would be so pretty if we had a really good snow, but then I remember the 45 mile commute and the importance of this last business month of the year and I think maybe just being really cold isn't so bad after all.

SG texted me last night that he's done with his gig in North Carolina.  His plan is to start working his way home tomorrow, although the storm they're getting might have him rethinking that.  I watch the weather reports and fret, wanting him to come home soon but wanting him to be safe even more.  I pray for him to be safe on the road and for all the other people who are caught out on dangerous roads this time of year.  He will stop and enjoy some time with his son in Mississippi and then with some friends of ours who are in Houston before pointing his wheels north and coming home to me.  

It is physical inventory time at work, and I went in to help and provide support for our crew who is working overtime today.  Next weekend I'll go to our outside warehouse for their inventory.  The kids are with their dad this week and I'm happy to keep busy so the time between now and when my husband is home will go by more quickly.  I can take some days off when he's back.

As much as I'm not fond of this bitter cold winter weather, it reminds me to be grateful for the many blessings my family enjoys.  It might be cold outside, but I have warm clothes and a warm home to return to.  I might not like driving the long miles to work, but not only do I have a job, but I have a job that I love.  I might be lonely, but it is temporary because my husband is coming back soon, and I'm not as lonely as I might be otherwise because I've got friends and family who are happy to help keep me company while he's gone.

I'm feeling thankful.

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Oh Christmas.

I Need Some Wind for my Sails

Its the end of another week and I am so pathetically grateful to not have to get up tomorrow and put one foot in front of the other while pretending I have it all together I could cry. 

The stress of fending off the world seems to be cumulative, and yesterday I got the good/not so good news that SG might be staying longer on this Nebraska job.  Yay, because its more money into the pathetically empty coffers, but really, BOO because he won't be here for Thanksgiving and I'm so lonely and so tired of dealing with everything and not having my husband at home to sit down after a long day and talk to over a nice glass of wine.  I still have the glass of wine, but the dogs are less interested in hearing about my day than they are in having their dinner RIGHT NOW PLEASE.  If it wasn't for the evenings I get to stop at my parents and visit before I take the kids home I think I would give up the attempt to stay sane.

My struggles pale in comparison to what's happening over in New Jersey and the outside buroughs of New York City, so I should quit complaining.  No matter what's happening in my life, there's someone somewhere dealing with something a hell of a lot worse.  See?  Mindset changed.  Gratitude abounds.

Mr. Race Car Man had a good start to his school year, but has been struggling the last few weeks.  His good days still outnumber his bad days. Last year he had to earn the letters K-I-N-D-L-E by displaying expected behaviors.  If he earned all six letters, he got to either play on my Kindle Fire or play games on the Wii.  This year, since he's older and has gotten better with his skills, his teacher upped the ante and now he has to earn the letters P-L-A-Y G-A-M-E.   If he doesn't earn all eight letters he doesn't get Wii at my house or Playstation if he's at his dad's.  Since he's absolutely mad about gaming, this is a very big incentive for him to master his behaviors and his responses.  He earns his games more days than he does not, but the days he doesn't are really tough days, not just for him but for his teachers and classmates.  Monday morning he decided to run away rather than get on the bus, and my friend Debbie who watches them in the mornings, the aide from the bus and my daughter had to go on a merry chase around the neighborhood to catch him.  The upside of having a very tall and strong daughter is that she was able to nab the little turd and carry him on to the bus.  He then went on to have a very rotten day at school.  I hate those days, because he is so upset and fixated over over not getting to play his games.  Eventually he can be distracted, but he's got to go through his process of coping and folks, it ain't fun.  I feel bad for him, for his classmates, his teacher, and for those of us at home with him.

Fortunately we already had an appointment scheduled with our psychiatrist for Tuesday morning.  One thing I like about our psych is that he doesn't just ask me questions, he asks my child questions and carefully responds to him.  Throught a very calm and methodical interview, we were able to piece together some of the things that were going wrong for Race Car Man at school.  He is having great difficulty focusing in class.  He is very easily distracted by other students physical and verbal behavior.  This frustrates him greatly and makes him more likely to have difficulty controlling his behavior.

The psychiatrist made a med adjustment which we started immediately, and so far it seems to be helping.  Two fantastic days in a row doesn't mean as much as a couple of good weeks, so I'm not going to commit to saying "it worked!" -- but I'm encouraged. 

He can be such an engaging child.  A lot of adults we encounter who don't know he has autism, if he's having a good day, are usually charmed by the way he interacts with them.  He loves to explain things, and with his extremely detailed memory and his love of reading information books rather than fiction, he can actually converse about a lot of things.  Combined with his extensive and very precise vocabulary, he seems far beyond his years. 

I wish he'd eat, though.  We weighed and measured him at the doctor's office.  Since last school year he's grown three inches but gained no weight whatsoever.  I can't find pants to fit him that don't leave his ankles and half his shins exposed.

One of his favorite new activities is to brush his sister's hair.   Its almost to her waist now, and I found a special brush at the local beauty supply that lives up to its claims of being "ouchless."  He will sit behind her in the chair at my desk, and while she plays a game he brushes her hair.  Whenever they do this my heart just melts.

So things aren't as good as they could be and they aren't as bad as they could be.  I just feel drained right now and unable to cope with even the smallest setbacks.  Maybe Race Car Man isn't the only one who needs a medication change.

 

Cats are for soaking up tears

The nights when the kids are at their dads are simultaneously awesome and terrible.  The house is so quiet.  Too quiet.  I shuffle around in my slippers, turning off lights, locking doors, talking to the animals as if they could understand and respond.  Crazy cat lady.

Back when I was newly separated I had gotten in the bad habit of letting the dogs sleep on the bed.  Three big dogs, nicely filling up the empty side of the bed and making me feel somewhat less alone.  Except there's a problem with dogs and beds.  Pretty soon they think they have a right to be there, and if for any reason you don't want them up there, they sit on the floor and whine incessantly.  Or they growl at you when you want to move them.  Or they take up so much space there's not much room for you any more.   Not a problem - so long as you don't ever get remarried.  It turns out that teaching your dogs to stay off the bed takes just about as long as it takes to teach your kid to sleep in his own bed:  three nights, and the occasional slide into bad habits.

Cats are a different story.  Cats do not take up an excess amount of space.  Cats, unlike small dogs, do not burrow under the covers and do their best to put their nose in your private parts.  Cats, if you are not allergic, are wonderful heat sources.

Juliet has slept with me most nights the last couple of years.  If she's not sleeping with me she's in my daughter's bed, but most often she's with me.  She will leap up next to me, knead the covers a bit, then plop herself down with her back pressed up against my stomach.  I pet her a little, and she purrs quietly, making soft snuffly noises.   At some point in the night I will roll over, and she will use this opportunity to crawl under the covers and rearrange herself in the curl of my belly or behind my knees.  We have a predictable and comfortable arrangement, she and I. 

There are times of late that my bed seems huge and empty, there are times when the fact that I am lonely hits me like a freight train.  There are times when I realize that my closest and dearest sleeping companion is a cat.  Then I start to feel a little bit sorry for myself and the tears flow.  Once Fortunately Juliet doesn't mind getting a little bit soggy. 

Comfort, thy name is Cat.

 

 

Bounce

Sometime around 5:30 this morning I went to take the garbage bag from under the sink out to the bin.  It was still dark, and as I lifted the lid I lifted my face away from the stink and scanned the sky.

About two blocks away I could see an enormous billowing cloud of smoke, full of sparks and backlit by orange flames and street lamps.  "Oh, crap," I said.  Because, you know, I'm all eloquent and shit like that.

I grabbed my coffee cup (when your dad is a retired firefighter, fires are spectacles, not events), stuck my flip flops on my feet and moseyed up the street.  I don't really know the people who lived in the house, but their outbuildings were ablaze and they were frantically spraying water on their vehicles and their roof to keep their house safe.  Its an old farmhouse, and probably would have been in as bad shape as their garage and barn except right about then the first firetrucks arrived.

By the time I left for work, the fire was pretty well out.  I stopped and got out of the car to see if they needed anything.  They had an old skinny horse tied up to a tree, and I inquired if they needed a place to put him.  The two young guys that were there said the man who owned the horse was at work, and they didn't really know.  I checked him over - he was a little shocky, but more concerning he was clearly underweight and his feet looked like they hadn't seen a rasp in about 10 years.  He was very kind and patient and let me look in his mouth and pick up his feet without protest.  I suggested they get him some water and then I went back home and threw a bale of hay in the truck to give them.  He was eating and drinking water when I left, so I was encouraged.  By now I'm late for work, but its not every day you wake up to a fire in the neighborhood.

Yesterday SG left for Nebraska.  Oh, I know we thought he'd not have to go back on the road, but at some point the not-finding of the local work and the pile of bills (not to mention getting hay put in for an embarassing number of horses) dictated otherwise.  He'll be back mid-November.  If there was anyone as conflicted as this man about leaving for a job I've yet to meet them.  Granted, it was a short notice scramble as he got the call about this job on Wednesday for a Monday start.  The adrenaline rush gets you booked and packed before you've had a chance to really think about whether you really want to go to Nebraska of all places in October and November.

Still, it was three or four in the afternoon on Saturday, his flight was leaving at 10 am Sunday and he was still waffling on whether he was staying or going.  I finally threw my hands up in despair and headed out to the barn to escape the anxious pacing and the muttering.  

It shouldn't be THAT hard a decision to go to work or not, especially in a down economy.  You just don't question the gift of paying work - even if it DOES require packing your long underwear.  But then you think back to the last couple of outages which all went much shorter than they were supposed to, which meant the private contractors didn't make nearly as much bank as they were counting on, and you count weeks and paychecks and you think that maybe it won't pan out - but in the end its still a job, and so the decision gets made.

And so we kiss goodbye before his folks come to take him on the two hour drive to the airport and then later on that afternoon the kids' dad comes to get them and suddenly I'm alone, trying to decide if I'm happy about it or not.  On the one hand, there's all of the ALL that is our crazy little farm and that's challenging when there's two adults to handle it.  And there's the lonely part of things, especially on the nights when the only warm bodies you can find to cuddle with are furry and don't have opposable thumbs with which to rub your back.  But then you think about how nice it is to have a bathroom to yourself and how much less laundry there'll be, and dishes too, and then you wake up to see your neighbor's whole life going up in flames.

And then you read a post on Facebook from a friend you've known for years who just lost her husband.  And you realize pretty quickly how good you have it.

My man might not be home right now, but I still get to talk to him and hold him again in a few weeks' time.  My house might be a little quiet and empty, but it is standing.  My husband might not get as much work out of this as he wants, but it is still work. 

This is how you bounce back.

 

When I'm sleeping I don't remember things

The alarm goes off and I hit snooze.  In the five minutes before it starts again, I dream about my my friend Jaimee and my brother, all in the same room. Some social event, someone's house.  I don't know.  We're holding big cups of beer.  He's sort of ignoring me, I can't get his attention.  Jaimee stands next to me like she's my spirit animal or something, protective and guarding.  When the rooster in my alarm starts crowing I jerk awake so quickly the cat jumps off my pillow.    I'm disoriented and I hit the snooze again.    I don't remember what I dreamed - if I dreamed anything - in the next five-minute increment.  Finally I have to get moving or I'll be even later than normal.

As is usual lately, I don't remember at first when I wake up that you're not here.  Not like I did the first week.  Its not until I push the button on the coffee grinder and it grinds out enough for twelve cups of coffee and I think to myself "I should reset that thing."

I eat, I surf the web, I wake the kids and the chaos distracts me for a while.

And then I go into the bathroom to shower and after I stand at the mirror with my wet hair and I look at the counter where the can of your shaving cream sits and then I look at my reflection and the tears come.

I'm here.

You're not.

It feels like I've done something wrong, somehow, like punishment.  Except I don't know what it was that I did and I know there's nothing I can undo.  I just have to outlast the slow tick of the clock.

Its not personal, of course its not.  We have to do what we have to do.  But the awful loneliness in me, it feels intensely personal.  How could it not?

 

Dog + Bone = Me

As much as I throw it out there that letting go of things is a healthy way to exist, I'm not always so good at being a person who lets go of things.  I have a tendency to perseverate.  My husband and I will have a disagreement over something, and days later I am still stuck on a particular thing he said that I thought was wrong, and having repeated conversations with myself where in I roleplay both of us and stick my point to him over and over until he falls over from the sheer brilliance of my superior mind. 

Or some drama on the internet will settle hooks into my gray matter and no matter how useless it may be, I find myself idly drawn to hunting down more tidbits of information or opinion.  Sometimes its not even an issue I particularly take sides in, but part of me just can't help but watch it unfold.  I pick up nuance and opinion and data and start playing them on an endless background loop. 

My shrink said that I do this in order to distract myself from my deeper feelings of fear and loss, of self-loathing and shame.  I would counter that as I age I find less to loathe about myself, but I can't help but admit that I still struggle with all of those things.

If life were fair and if life unfolded according to my plan...probably we'd all fall off the surface of the planet because I would have forgotten to make sure we always had gravity turned on.

So then you'll agree its probably best I'm not in charge of this whole shebang.

I'm struggling lately with feelings of loneliness and fear.  By the time my husband comes home from this job he will have been gone...a lot.  Putting numbers on it doesn't really do anything but make it seem worse.  Lets just say gone more than he's been home.  And I'm selfish.  Even when I know that he, as a capital-M Man has the same drive that I have to shoot the biggest mammoth I can in order to provide for my family, I still at the bottom most layer of it just really want him to not be gone.  I want someone besides the Betta Fish on my kitchen counter to talk to in evenings when the kids are at their dads.  I want to go out to breakfast with SG, not alone and certainly not with the kids.  I want to come home to my husband's arms and his being glad to see me at the end of the day.   

And I find myself being childish and petulant about it. 

I think of my son, upset because he can't play his beloved game.  He makes it into a Supreme Court Case.  "If you really loved me you'd let me play."   "My life is ruined right now and nothing will make it better."  "I hate you."  "Global warming will end if you just let me play my game."  (No, he didn't really say that.  I made it up.  But how cool would it be if he DID say that? How utterly cool?)

I catch myself being dramatic even in my thoughts. 

I'm always alone.

No one will ever really love me.

We're all going to die in a fiery explosion because I have to be celibate for three months.

IF HE REALLY LOVED ME HE'D GIVE UP EVERYTHING JUST TO BE WITH ME.

You know, stuff along those lines.  Real sane, level-headed, purposeful CLEAR thinking.  Ha, I crack myself up.

And I'm not really sure how to make that thought cycle stop. 

Help.

Kill a groundhog, save our sanity

We woke up a week ago tomorrow to three inches of snow on the ground and frozen, crappy roads about half the way of my 45 mile commute to work.  The irony of this is that it wasn't that long ago I was begging for snow, and the minute I woke up and looked out the window, all I could think of was strangling a small burrowing mammal in Pennsylvania.

Over it now.  Enough with the winter already.

And then yesterday and today, I've had to drive with my windows down because its so warm.

Ahhh.  Spring.  Or as we like to call it in the Tri-Cities, mud season.

The arrival of snow was mitigated by the arrival of my parents, who returned this week from their annual winter sojourn in Yuma.  This was the last one for a while, my dad is increasingly less mobile, it takes an act of God to get him on an airplane, and the 1200 mile drive is getting increasingly more difficult for him.   I'm selfish enough to be grateful for this.  Their annual October departure is really hard, and not having family nearby makes me feel a little empty in the middle.   Now they're home, and not surprisingly I notice the absence of my brother far more acutely.  There's an empty seat at the table, we all know it, and we all struggle with it in our own way.  They're back though, that's what really matters right now.

Their timing was excellent, as SG left Friday for a six week job in Arizona.  (ARIZONA:  You are on notice.  Please stop borrowing the people I love. Thank you very much.)  I hope this is the last road trip.   He's starting a new venture when he gets back, and I'm hopeful that it will work out well enough to keep him from ever needing to do another outage.  Life is full of The Crazy as it is, and not having him here to balance out the Doing of Things That Need Doing makes for a very busy me.   Plus, the last couple of road jobs had him gone so very long, it was really a low time for me.  I'm struggling with it, I suppose I should know better, but there it is.  I hate it when he's gone.

I've managed (as usual) to complicate things by taking on two horses on a care lease.  I wouldn't have normally done this, because we all know I don't need two more horses.  These girls, though, are in need of some TLC.  Their owner is a very young woman who has had some issues and some difficulty, and they haven't been receiving the level of care they need.  They're severely underweight and need some vet care.  Sweet mares, both of them. 

Its never not a zoo around here.  Sometimes it surprises me how well SG has adapted to my chaotic life.  I think he has nerves of steel.  Or perhaps he can cope with it because he knows he can run away every few months and get a little vacay from the cray cray.  God knows I wish I could have one.

SG's departure and the bigger sense of loss I've felt around my brother with my parents return have me thinking about loss and the changing nature of life.    As David Richo reminds us in The Five Things We Cannot Change, "everything begins and ends," and you know - the beginning is always the easy part.  The ending not so much.  I took Tasha, my brother's dachshund, to my parents today so that they can care for her while SG is gone.  (She's used to having someone home, she's elderly, and I am gone 11+ hours a day when I'm working.  She needs someone to keep company with).  She's doing really well, considering, but we all know its a matter of time with her.  Truth is, its just a matter of time for all of us - and for all things  in our lives and in our world. 

Everything changes and ends.  Its a simple fact of life that its hard to embrace some days.  But I know that fighting it only leads to increased pain and stress.  Accepting it just means I can grieve and then, at some point, let go.

Its just...the last few months seem to have been so filled with loss.  My brother, SG's grandma, a close family friend, Hercules, a smart and talented blogger, someone's husband, someone's father, someone's wife, someone's child I read about in the paper. Half my chickens.  Even famous people who I normally wouldn't think twice about, but when your mind is dwelling on loss, their passing seems to only compound the egregiousness of it all.  I'd just like us all to have a break, thanks, even knowing that its not at all likely.

The changing and ending aren't always bad things.  Winter ends so spring can arrive with the scent of growing things on the warm breezes and the return of the birds and eggs in the chicken coop on a regular basis.  Spring ends so we can bask in the heat of summer and enjoy the great outdoors in all her glory, and then summer bows her head and gives way to the lovely burnished hues of fall.   

The seasons and all of nature, they just roll with it.  As should we all.

Counting things

I keep the pillow you slept on when you were home next to me at night.  Its a poor substitute, but I imagine it still retains the scent of you.  Sometimes it comforts me, but other times it just makes me miss you all the more.

When I can't sleep, I start counting. 

You left for the first job 65 days ago.

 41 days later you came home for 11 days.

We got married 15 days ago.

You will come home again in 36 days and stay for 5 days (5?  or 4?).

Then you'll go back to work and be gone for another 122 days, give or take travel time between this job and the next.

Altogether, when these three contracts are done, you will have been gone somewhere around 225 days altogether.  Over seven months.  More than half a year. 

I need to stop counting.   Its not helping me sleep.