Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Insomniac Rambling

It's 2:30 in the morning and I can't sleep. Might have something to do with the three hour long nap I took from five to eight p.m. but maybe not.

I've got a lot on my mind. In the last 12 hours I almost decided to move my family to Michigan, and then talked myself out of it. Talk about a whirlwind. I'm slightly impulsive. Have you figured this out yet?

A lot has been happening since I last blogged. I've been recuperating from my seizure incident and am happy to report that I appear to be in perfect health. I haven't been able to drive though, so my activities have been limited. Being cooped up in the house with kids all summer is about as much fun as a root canal.

Remember a while back I blogged about quiet time, yeah, there hasn't been any of that here for the last two months.

So I've been thinking a lot about how not fun it is being a pseudo-single mom. You see my husband works out of town so when he is working he is gone. We need him to work eight or nine months out of the year to be able to pay for nice things like a roof over our head and something more nutritious than top ramen to eat every night. Not that top ramen isn't yummy.

Single moms have my utmost respect. I don't know how they do it. On top of everything I do, manage the house, pay the bills, cook, clean, taxi the kids to soccer and other activities, oversee homework, make appointments and actually remember to deliver the kids to the doctor, dentist, orthodontist, and eye doctor, they actually have to WORK to make the money to pay for every thing. On their own!!! Not that I don't work. I have a fun little job that I do during the day while the kiddos are in school which allows me to contribute a couple hundred dollars to our monthly budget. I don't have to worry about making enough to pay for the roof, food, and other essentials. My hubby rules in that department.

With that said, living apart from your one and only true love for any amount of time blows chunks, so I keep trying to figure out how to fix it. If my hubby worked only in one state it would be simple, live in that state, but life isn't that simple. His latest job is taking him to Michigan and it appears that it might be for longer than his usual 3 month stint. It might be 6 or 9. So the plan was hatched to move there for a year. For a girl who grew up in sunny California and then moved to even more sunny Arizona, living somewhere with snow sounded kinda fun. Think of the blogging I could have done about the evils of snow shoveling. Everything was on hold waiting to get the call that he was going for sure.

Today that call came. He leaves Friday. All of a sudden we had to figure out how to make our plan a reality. But after much deliberation, u-Haul rental quotes, input from the children, etc. the hubby and I decided it made more financial sense to stay put. Damn finances. Can't I win the power ball already? So here I am getting ready to face another several months being the one woman show.

Which brings me to gratitude. People are always asking me how I do it. My biggest secret is I always try to think about how lucky I am. I have many friends who have spouses in the military. Many of them have dealt with their husbands being gone for a year at a time. The most my husband is ever gone is three months and nobody is shooting at him or trying to blow him up. In comparison to them I have it easy. When I start to feel sorry for myself having to manage the kids and the house alone, I think of the single moms that have to bring home the bacon too. No matter what comes my way I can always look at it and see that even though it might seem terrible on the surface, I'm still quite fortunate. Sure I might rant now and then (my blog might be boring if I didn't), but after the ranting is over I always find a way to be thankful.

1 comments:

Bethalea said...

doooode. Michigan? YOU WOULD HAVE DIED. :-) sorry it sucks though, but I love your optimism.

On another note, guess who has his own right-wing psycho blog? My one and only brother, Jason! Do you remember him? hmmmmmmm?

anyway, let me know if you want the link, i'll give it to you.

xo - hang in there. I think you rock.

b.