Time Waster

It's super late and I have not posted on here in forever. Honestly, that is because I thought I was doing pretty good. I had friends to keep me busy, started going to the gym, a lot, and so on and so forth. I think I have been handling things pretty well.

It kind of sticks in the back of my mind at night before I go to sleep though, that Trevor isn't here. And we won't be back for awhile yet. Once I head back home from Wisconsin, (I am here for the month) then we will only be at the half way point.

I have noticed that everyone, including Trevor, have been saying how fast this time has been going. So apparently I am the only person it is dragging on for...Maybe it is because I am keeping track of it. I wish I could just go to sleep then wake up whenever he was home. But that would be a huge waste of time.

This entire deployment feels like a huge waste of our time...

Valentines Day

Freedom?

Now that I am living on my own there are some weird things I have been realizing. Especially since I don't have a job and I don't have kids to chase around the only thing I really have to worry about are online classes. Which, depending on how I feel that day can take about 45 minutes to an hour and a half of my day.

I have this strange freedom where I can just float around and do whatever I want. There's really no one telling me what I have to do when and I have very limited responsibilities. I am not going to lie, it is almost uncomfortable. I feel like this is the freedom that everyone wants to find by the time they are sixty but now I am starting to understand why people tend to go back to work after they retire.

Hanging Out

So after my panic attack about bare walls I went to my room and pouted in bed while watching Chopped on Food Network. All last night was a very upsetting pout fest.

Thank god Trevor managed to get solid internet and we were able to video call for a few hours in the morning. I really needed that to be able to get out of bed right now. I know that sounds mellow-dramatic but sometimes I just want to lay in bed all day and say fuck everything.

Anyway, today I decided to deal with the blank space on all of our walls by printing off a bunch of out wedding photos and and framing some of my artwork.

It is amazing what a few photos and paintings can do. Feels like home again.

Negative Space

Before Christmas I went crazy with decorating. I put flashing lights up on the walls and stuck up all the Christmas cards we got up with stocking and little felt penguins. I even covered the kitchen cabinets with candy cane stripped wrapping paper.

I finally took that all down today and I didn't realize how much wall space all that stuff was taking up. There are huge bare spots everywhere and it feels like it did when we first moved in. Now that Trevor is gone along with all the stuff covering the walls everything feels empty here and I am not sure what to do about it.

As an artist I am so used to covering up the blank spots and this time I can't. It is totally out of my control and it is freaking me out.

Something I have always struggled with as an artist and a person was appreciating negative space...

Days Gone By

Days have been going by pretty fast. It doesn't help that I have been getting up between 10 and 11 but I am not really going to complain. I've been getting the stuff that I needed to get done for the most part plus the faster the days go the sooner Trevor gets back home.

I've been busy trying to get our bathroom to a point where I don't hate it. I think I am making pretty good progress and I manage to paint something I am pretty damn proud of. I almost don't want to stick it in there but we will see. It is going to go in there for awhile as I trial run.

I have also been making leaps and bounds in LoZ: Skyward Sword. I like the game, don't get me wrong, but using the sword directions is pretty clunky. I don't know if it is just because my Wii is old or if it's the game itself. The puzzles and flight controls are fun but when it comes to fighting it just pisses me off and I end up flailing until I manage to kill everything in site.

As of right now my biggest problem is meals for one person...I have been eating ramen (the noodle, not my cat) and canned ravioli for the passed few days. Needless to say it is not the most healthy diet. I need to go shopping but I don't even know what to get. I think tonight I am just going to get Subway then figure out what to buy tomorrow. I need to stay away from junk food though. If anyone has ideas for cooking for one let me know in the comments, it will be really appreciated! Otherwise I am going to have to start setting a plate for Ramen (the cat) and he is going to get fat!

Odd One Out

Now that Trevor is gone I feel like the odd one out when it comes to hanging out with our friends. Last night it was me, my friend and her two kids, then her friend and her kid, then assorted husbands and Marine friends. I had no baby to fuss over so I felt weird hanging out with them while they were fussing over their babies. Don't get me wrong, I am so happy they are my friends, I just have no experience with kids smaller that 6. New borns are lost on me.

So as it happened, I ended up playing beer pong outside with the guys which was more fun but awkward in itself. One, I hate drinking beer. Two, I hate drinking light beer, it makes me want to vomit. And after there balled cups, I almost did. But these guys knew each other. Two of them went to high school together and they all work together. I am not even going to pull out the sex card and say I was the only girl. Even if I did have a penis I would of felt awkward. After a few beers and a Slippery Nipple things got better.

I have come to terms with the fact that there is no way I will be able to get through this deployment alone. It is hard to open up to people I know well and I don't know my new friends that well, because they are new. New friends scare me! The awkward will go away faster if I get over that though...

Let's get this Bitch Over With

All last night and this morning I was thinking about what I should say to Trevor when he is about to get on the bus to deploy and I couldn't think of anything good enough. I kept thinking of mushy things to say like "Be safe, I'll be waiting" and everything else that seemed like it came straight from The Notebook. It made me more and more upset thinking about it and more frustrated that I couldn't come up with anything. After all, he knew I was going to be here when he came back and that I was going to write him a million letters.

Then this morning while he was getting dressed, Trevor said the six words that I never would had thought of. Let's get this bitch over with. It was so simple and it was what we both had been thinking for over a month. We just wanted his deployment to start so he could come home and we could go back to the way things were.

I don't think he knows what those words did for me. I managed to get him to the buses and watch them load the trucks with bags without turning into a sobbing mess like I thought I would.

It made me think that deployment is like getting your wisdom teeth taken out. You are numb for awhile, then it hurts and then after some time you go back to the way things were.

Elephants and Breadcrumbs

I heard from a reliable source once that a woman's brain never actually stops thinking and many times I tend to believe that but tonight I can't seem to think of anything and yet I can't seem to calm myself down into sleeping either. It is like my brain is thinking everything at once so fast that it is no longer really considering anything thoughts. Like all of the colors have come together to become white noise.

My husband, Trevor, came home from work and informed me that we should definitely do something fun together this weekend which initially got me all worked up and excited until he reminded me that it would be our last weekend before he deployed to Afghanistan again. I tried to keep a straight face but it was hard not to see that sentence took the wind out of my sails.  I hadn't even been thinking about how close it was that he was leaving. The only way I could describe the feeling I had at that point was the giant elephant in our apartment had decided to sit on my chest and hunker down for awhile.

That is probably why I still can't get myself to close my eyes and go to sleep, that damn elephant is still sitting on me.

This isn't the first time both of us had to deal with deployment but back then we were just dating and I was back home with my parents and my friends. Now I am married to the love of my life and have moved across the country into a cozy little apartment. I am just so scared of just sitting around and staring at the wall for hours on end. I have done it before and will probably do it again.

Don't get me wrong though, Ramen is the best buddy ever. He has a habit of voicing his opinions on certain topics but can always tell when to just shut up an listen. I also have a few friends here where I live, someone Trevor works with and his wife. So it isn't like I am sitting alone in a tiny apartment with nothing but a cat and a lap top for me to talk to, I just tend to think that way sometimes I suppose.

I doubt anything horrific will happen while he is gone, it is just the absence of someone that should be there. I'm sure most military wives or anyone that has been part of a long distance relationship knows what I am talking about. My days would pretty much start when Trevor came home from work and they would end when we went to bed. The part in between, when he was at work, what just filler and unimportant.

The best way I could explain my day is to compare it to a crab cake. Trevor would be the lumps of crab so on weekends, they are always really great filling crab cakes. Weekdays would be a mix of the lump crab and the breadcrumb filler so they were still pretty good but during deployment I am afraid they are just going to be mounds of breadcrumbs.

And no one wants that much breadcrumb. Except maybe that elephant.