The responsibility to appropriately represent (a) character(s)

What I am trying to tell you is this: in my own way, I love you. And you can trust me, mostly. I won't lead, wouldn't lead, haven't led you wrong. It would be bad form. But please know that if I do lead you wrong, I once thought it was right.

- Monson, Neck Deep, Appendix

I used to think that what I wanted was to be like you (or the many of you who are military wives). But really, I was an artist first and "they" say, "be true to yourself." I am a left-winged liberal. I don't believe in war. I would lend my crossed legs to a cause in need of silent protest. I try only to buy organic produce. There isn't much of me that fits the bill anyway. And there is the almost palpable barrier--a man in crisis. I don't think he reads this garbage anymore, so I am feeling a little less censored. That isn't even half of it. Maybe he thinks that The Lonely Sound was abandoned or he doesn't care anymore. In his own way, he loves me.

In my own way, I love you.

Lately I imagine the trajectory of a bullet. I imagine the spatter patterns it might cause on a wall or some other wayward surface. Brain matter, other parts. It doesn't matter. I play out the motions only in my head, and I'm only telling this because I'm tired of pussyfooting around the idea of self. I don't care if you like me. I should never have cared. And the truth, if there is such a thing, is that it may not be in the cards for me to "be" one of "you" army wives. Because life is a force to be reckoned with. It will happen according to or not at all resembling the outcome I reach for. We are born alone. We die alone. I write alone. I am beginning to believe that he wants to be alone, a man as Island.

(I am trying to disassociate myself.)

I am beginning to dream of the Anywhere I could move, the Anything I could do, all the dreams and ideals that dreamers and idealists conjure. I was, after all, an artist first, and then somehow his and somehow this.

I thought for the first time tonight that I could be okay married to creativity, the lonesome but not lonely eccentric. I thought that I could move in a couple of months for him, indulging the have-my-cake-and-eat-it-too element of whatever the fuck is going on here, but I won't. I need more satisfaction than that. I don't think I was ever meant to be the understudy, the shadow lurker. Some hours do belong solely to me.

And maybe I am the "married" type, and he is the one who isn't. Well, there isn't anything I can do to change him.

There isn't anything I can do to change him...but I was always honest. I always aimed for the LONG TERM.

Perhaps though, it's me? I always run. I'm kind of preparing to run now, peeling back the layers of happy-family-visions and the imagined faces of our unborn children, a fusion of more than individuals.

I feel like I am losing and because I don't care about winning per se (and he does), I think I am more privy to, or likely to examine the behavior of dissolution. We are fuzzy at the edges.

I am trying to read Brenda Miller's Season of the Body but it is proving difficult. Her focus is on the end of a relationship with Keith, who also makes an appearance in Blessing of the Animals in a beautiful essay called "A Different Person." It is so painful to imagine us parting ways. So unbelievably painful. I have harnessed so much in this Man, this ourness of life, a river fed by us as tributaries. And now what?

I am my own captain. (though not quoted, per request.)

I am not challenging the "who" manning the wheel. I am sure as shit my own captain.

Hold yourself together.

(punish someone else.)

All's well that ends well.

The long of it is logged in days and months and thousands of miles, and the short of it can be summed up in a mere two words:

he's home!

Deployment concluded.

a dream is a wish your heart makes

She stands to my right and I imagine her name to be something more usual than mine. If we had anything else in common it would be too much for me to remain composed. I am at the airport at an inopportune time waiting for my friend whose soldier also isn't coming home tonight. Everyone else, it seems, is eager to greet a pending commercial flight carrying long missed troops of an unknown kind. What matters is that not one of them is mine. I watch selectively for the familiar face I will soon be greeting, for the same glassy tired facade I know too well, and I try to look past the positively giddy expressions of the others, and the girl who I now know is waiting for a man named Cory.

She is approximately my age with brunette curls tossed carelessly into a ponytail, plain glasses, and an oversized t-shirt creased down the middle by dog tags that have likely kept vigil in his absence. She chatters to another woman, who is also waiting, about restaurant reservations and other modes of anticipatory busy work. It is all I can to do cross my legs tighter and more awkwardly and to chew at already brittle nails and to hope that the New Orleans flight empties before the onslaught occurs of unbearable reunions. Quietly, I wish the Dallas plane would turn around and fly back to whatever Middle Eastern country it originated from, just for the amount of time remaining before my soldier returns. Or I wish that I were in her place, feeling the same surge of mad tingling throughout every atom of the body in those too-long moments before the countdown ends. Relief is a thing I have long put out of heart and mind, and Denial is the vein in which I mostly reside--maintaining a cycle of remembering and forgetting him so I'm not always acutely aware of how painful it is to love and miss a man so intensely.

If I were a bigger, less selfish person I would find it in me to be happy for her and proud even, that she and I are a part of the same parallel universe. Instead, she makes me angry, and with envy and malice I want her suffering to continue, for The Staff Sergeant to be the one instructed to sprint from the Dallas plane door to my arms, even though I know that she has earned this homecoming through the endurance of millions of seconds passing like pinpricks, stinging reminders that life fragmented must somehow move forward as though it were whole.

By the time I've begun nervously gnawing the inside of my cheek, I happen to spot the top of my friend's head, bobbing beneath florescent lights in the flow of travelers. Before she sees me, she calls my phone (always held close) and I urge her to hurry because of what's coming. Without missing a beat, we join paces, step onto the escalator in synch, and crinkle our faces almost together in the funny looking but effective way that dams up the woe of this war thing. She hasn't been here since January, since the two of our soldiers left for the desert. More than anything, I think, she wants her fiance to take my place, to be the first hug after her flight. But nothing is normal anymore--for her, it's this welcome and pulling into the driveway of his house without him being home. For me, it's the stranger living the role I crave to land, the seething joy of enthusiasm weaving through each of her uninvited explanations of directions she has given her Cory or tasks she has carried out in preparation for the soon coming infallible instant, first of locked eyes, then a hug, a kiss, and the way her body will shudder from the shoulders down in a sigh of long-overdue relief.

the silence [i] keep from [my] head

I try to look happy and somewhere in my heart I must actually be happy for them, but mostly I'm the same kind of jealous as every other summer of my adult life when the engagement announcements come pouring in. I just learned that one of my oldest friends is getting married. I think I knew him when he was three years old. It's hard enough to believe that we're so much older and that I think we should all be so much more experienced, so much further aged than we are. And then the childish tears well, the whiney phrase, "not fair" finds use, and the pacing begins and I can no longer look around the elephant in every room. I think to myself, "well, wouldn't it be nice..."

This time it has very little to do with someone else being in a place that I am not - metaphorically speaking. Instead it has everything to do with the volume and obstacle of oceans and continents, this goddamn war, the lushness of spring versus alien deserts. We've talked about "taking the plunge" but...a voice is a delay is a phone call is lacking. This is neither the time or place and that is precisely the notion that throws me off balance. Life on pause is worse than life remodeled, is worse than living like the hours are mine. I can lose myself in a frenzy of recipes and organic vegetable seeds and cold brewed coffee and local eggs and manual mowers and prayers and mantras and clean plastics, but only until I remember:

I want him to come home.

I want him to come home.

I want him to come home.

Sundays

...are our "thing." Some couples travel or participate in extreme sports together but the thing that we most love to do is wring every drop of rest and relaxation out of Sundays. I used to sleep in with him but as deployment got nearer, I started not being able to stay in bed past 8am. And since PT calls him into work really early every other day, save Saturdays, he doesn't want to budge before mid-morning and I'm okay with that. So if I get up early I do my thing until the day draws him out from under the covers, and if we both sleep in...well, you know.

We almost always make breakfast together, which is one of the most critical elements of our Sunday experience. Before he moved to The House of a Thousand Males, he would wow me with the most incredible omelets filled with whatever was left over from our week of dinners. Omelets being one of my culinary weaknesses, I am always fascinated by the taste and presentation he can produce, and yet he always thinks I'm humoring him when I tell him that he'll forever be the omelet maker of this couple. We brew up some coffee, sit leg-to-leg on the couch and find something mindlessly entertaining to watch until we're finished. My coffee is always hardly touched because I'm one of those one-task-at-a-time eaters but it will wait for me on the corner of the coffee table until later.

Later comes when we decide it's time for lunch or errands or both. I will heat up the morning's brew to take along and without fail I will spill it in his truck. There is an ill enforced ban issued on open containers in The Monster (truck). He will grab whatever is in the back - a dirty t-shirt, sweats, the occasional paper towel - to treat my havoc and he will roll his eyes and comment in a humorously exasperating tone. Then we leave down his street for an army supply store or the book store or Walgreens or the range. Maybe we'll see a movie or rent one, and eventually we find our way back [home is a relative term]. I'll make dinner, he'll tell me it's amazing, then we do homework or watch a movie or he packs for the next thing.

There isn't a thing that makes this routine special except that it taps into a kind of normal that only shows itself on rare occasions. The Army keeps life in a perpetual spin. Sundays are anchors in a constant barrage of anything-goes.

23 of 31: a brief mid-Monday ramble

I got to talk to The Staff Sergeant last night for an hour an a half - yes, you read it correctly. It had been four days with no word, which is unusual, and unusually difficult given the weighty questions I had been over-analyzing since then. This is one of the downfalls I'm finding to living solo - too much time with oneself. I, for one, can't stand to be with only me for large quantities of time. Digression occurs, festering occurs, worst-case-scenarios devour reason and logic and benefits of doubt. I'm still trying to figure out what will happen in the next year as our lives seem to be teaming with possibilities that do not always feel mutually inclusive [to me]. He settled my mind a little, but as I continue to learn the fickle nature of the Army, I'll believe it all when I see it.

I told him about my "gardening" endeavors and he immediately drew a line from my actions to Michelle's. And I have to say, I don't mind being compared to the First Lady one bit. I love her more and more, from military family support to organic gardening, she pretty much rocks.

And on that note, I'll have to tie things up. This was totally an act of procrastination. I have a proposal due in about an hour and I actually have to take something to class!

13 of 31: giving (confession)

I've heard that it takes about twelve weeks before this starts to feel normal.  I'm not quite there so I can't vouch for the resolution that is said to bloom after three months of struggling to find a balance.  What I do know is that it hasn't come soon, in fact I have done a fair share of backsliding, which leads me to believe that I am progressing, though I can't determine if I've moved from denial to anger or depression in the grief process.  There are no moments that I can recall bargaining for anything so I'm led to think that this is anger.  I feel like I don't know him in pictures, that we might as well be filler models used to show how perfectly other couples' smiles might fit within the frames.

I really wouldn't write any of this if I wasn't supposed to write something daily.  As it turns out, March is full of cynicism and will accurately be remembered as such.  One of my friends recently explained to me that she would like to run away from her life.  I asked her to share her destination because I would happily pack my bags to join her.  I need a manual (written by a human being) on how to do this.  I feel like I'm failing us by not being strong enough, yet I don't know how to be anything other than this.  

Tune in for April, maybe I'll edge toward acceptance next month.  

12 of 31: (too early to be) giving

Somewhere the sun is brewing it's coffee and for reasons unknown to me I am already awake, wide awake despite the screaming headache that sent me to bed early or the melatonin supplement I took before I buried my face into a pile of pillows meant to simulate the shape of him next to me.  It's freezing in my house as Winter simply will not give up its reign - 38 degree highs, possible snow.  Give me a break.

Perhaps it was the chill that stirred me from restless sleep, except that on one side of me was my dog and huddled against my other leg was my tabby cat, not to mention the oversized hoodie I'm still wearing, stolen from The Staff Sergeant's closet.  

Before pushing back the covers I laid still, trying to recall the last time I had gotten up before sunrise.  It was prior to his leaving, all those mornings of PT, incessant snoozing of his cell phone alarm in the darkness, a reason to pull in closer to him, just a few more minutes.  It was the first memory in at least a week that I didn't snarl at or hold at arm's length.  I let myself feel it, the up and down of his chest, how warm his body would be beneath the covers, the way he would eventually ease away from my arms, trying not to wake me up as he headed for his closet or a shower, his first-thing kiss meant to be so weightless that I wouldn't really notice, not until the one before he left for the day.   

I know better than to fight these circumstances; losing is inevitable.  The army will always win.  Similarly, my emotions will always trump an attempt to hold them down for the sake of looking the part.  I miss him like crazy, some days so much that I don't know what to do with myself.  And I assure you that there are things he is perfectly capable of and willing to do to help make this easier for me.  It's just a matter of having enough time on the phone to work it out, and maybe not being disconnected next time.

11 of 31: giving (and giving, and giving...)

I am a real live girl, though I would love to pick the brain of every woman who stands by her soldier needless, wanting for nothing.  I read this the other day as I worked hard to hold down the cushions of my sofa:

There is absolutely nothing your servicemember can do to make you feel better about deployment and handling life on your own.  He cannot leave his station, and he cannot come to your rescue.

And I thought to myself, "If I could meet this condescending portrait of person, I don't believe I could restrain myself from verbally attacking her, at the very least."  I am so completely, utterly tired of this mantra that is ceremoniously passed down like a spirit stick of vacancy.  I cannot be that woman; there is a reason that he is a soldier and that I am not.  I don't believe that I have to be that hollow person while he is gone.  I don't believe that I can be or that such expectations should be set for any one of us who count the days until our hearts return from war.

This is damn hard, and I am willing to suffer the consequences of saying so.  I need and expect just a little because this is, after all, a relationship, a matter of give-and-take.  I fully understand that he is limited, that he is tired and stressed out, and maybe even homesick, but who the hell decided that those who are left behind should be empty human beings that feel nothing, that need nothing at all in return?  

There are some days that I can't stand this culture.  

6 of 31: giving (proof)

Here it is folks - signs that Winter is losing the fight!  And not a moment too soon:

This post is the last thing on my list before loading the car and getting the hell out of Dodge.  I need the break.  I need the distraction as I am fending off tears right now while I write these words.  I'm feeling very...I don't know, unfulfilled in the moment.  I can't help wanting more than is rationed for today, for this week, for Us.  And what better way to avoid the reality of dealing with it than to escape?

What's that behind you?  

[I'm slipping out the door while your head is turned.]

4 of 31: giving (myself a break)

I have never in all my life been so excited about spring break.  

Never.  

I'm pretty sure we all felt the same way in class tonight with the windows open to filter in the optimism of changing weather.  There were a number of laugh-till-we-cried moments, specifically during a sloppy reenactment of Arthur Miller's The Crucible.  

Thursdays nights were marked for gut-busting episodes last Fall and sadly they don't occur nearly as much as of late.  It was refreshing, though, to feel young and loopy and to laugh and laugh without reserve...at jokes that only us English nerds find funny.

It's been a while since I've felt entitled to double over, silly with joy, glad to just be alive.  My skin and my bones are voracious with a craving for sunshine and breezes that don't make your limbs scream with pain before going numb.  

It isn't all in the air.  I'm also glad to feel grateful again for a good man and a community of army wives ready to stand-in for my backbone when I don't have the wherewithal to hold a steady posture.  I feel like this week's low spot, while it was dim, allowed me to get to know a few ladies better.  I'm grateful to be building stronger relationships with The Staff Sergeant's family, as we are all stretched by the sacrifices he has to make for his convictions.  But there is something to be said for the bleak outlook cast by dreary Winter, and the new vision that is brightened by Spring.  

3 of 31: giving (signs of hope)

I'm feeling much better today, however the day is still young.  We have not yet encroached upon the frail hours.  The good news, besides my return to a composed human being, is that the sun is out.  The running bad news is that it's still Winter - 29 degrees in Middle Tennessee in March (at noon, no less) is UN-accept-able.  The other good news is that following the weird conversation I had with The SS yesterday morning, I got an email from him yesterday afternoon.  Not only is it a lavish occasion to hear from him twice in one day, but I quite nearly jumped on top of the table to dance in celebration of an induced response.  In the same day I had sent an email and received a reply.  I felt, if only temporarily, like a reciprocal participant in our relationship, I mean, beyond care packages and general supportiveness.

I love you no matter how you deal with anything.

He reminds me that it isn't only about being there for him, even though I struggle to be mindful of that truth.  I find that it's easy to dismiss the honesty I would otherwise rely on if he weren't where he is, doing what he's doing.  There's not a thing in the world that would keep me from crying if we were face to face and I was overtaken by the urge.  I would tell him if and when something was bothering me (after some coaxing). 

This is proving to be one of the bigger challenges of this journey - whether or not to put normal behavior on the back burner while he's away.  There are strong arguments for both, and being a huge advocate for authenticity, I am constantly in the middle of a battle between mind and heart.  

Between that and my blatant need for control, I have my work cut out for the duration of this deployment.  At least today it feels do-able.  I looked at the calendar, broke the days down to the percentage accomplished and the percentage remaining and I didn't crumble.  That's surely a sign of a rebound in progress.

you know all the rules by now

I'll preface the following with this character flaw: I can be a little neurotic.  

I missed Thursday's call and then Friday's.  I blogged that already.  

I was crossing the street when I noticed the second one and I thought, though just for a fleeting second, about stopping mid-stride.  To say that I was angry with myself would be an understatement.  Both prompted minor episodes of...[cough]...graceful disappointment but life went on.  I kept the phone close all day Saturday and Sunday but by Sunday night I could no longer stave off the throes of absolute hysterics.  

I struggle with the lack of control that this deployment seems to yield.  Two missed calls back-to-back is one thing.  Worrying that he might think it was intentional is another.  After four days of furious festering, all I could think about was the probability that he had concluded I no longer loved him.  In retrospect I can acknowledge the level of ridicule that this deserves, however in the moment it was reasonable fuel for a kind of discord that unhinged me.  I couldn't tell him that I was punishing myself for the simple error of a silenced phone.  I couldn't tell him that he had done nothing but make this easier for me, that I love him to pieces, that I was sorry.  I couldn't do anything more than watch for a tiny screen to light up, "unknown."

This morning I finally got to talk to him.  My mouth opened and apologies gushed like dammed water released -  

IloveyouandI'msosorryandpleasedon'tthinkIwouldignoreyouonpurpose

[breath]

I don't think I could be too angry to want to hear your voice.  Please don't think I don't love you.

I think he phrased it as, "jumping to extreme conclusions," and I'm pretty sure he said so laughing.  After all he knows me and how I let the cynical committee of judges in my head take over sometimes.  He assured that he never once entertained any one of the crazy things that I had assumed and that he had never questioned how much he is loved.  

After our conversation, I was too relieved to feel as embarrassed as I should have.  He is the Reason and Strength in this couple.  I grip tightly and sink in my heels, all the while hoping for just enough prowess to portray a state of sanity.  

UGH!

I missed my first call this afternoon. I wasn't doing anything worthy of it or too-busy for it. It was a careless mistake; I forgot to turn the ringer back on after driving around with a friend's napping baby. It was less than an hour after he had called that I discovered the notice on the screen of my cell. What a small event it takes to deliver such a crushing blow. I cried. I emailed him. I prayed to my phone god that by technological miracle he would call back (just then), but he didn't. It's late where he is so I'm hoping for the maybe that tomorrow holds.

In an effort to pull myself together, I'll end on a positive note. Baby Girl's mom and I went antique shopping and I got this vintage reprint for my dining room:
And an adorable miniature ice bucket for the bar-in-progress.  It looks something like this one:

my REAL Valentine's gift(s):

I've been meaning to write about Valentine's Day.  The last post featured a little self indulgence, but the real surprise was these gorgeous roses that came on Friday.  He wanted me to get them a day early so I'd have them all day on Saturday and to maintain the element of surprise.  Saturday I got to talk to him for ALMOST AN HOUR!  It was the best 47 minutes in the last two months because it felt like we got to be ourselves.  An even bigger surprise was his nonchalance regarding the ring info I sent. I was absolutely certain that he would 1) panic and 2) never, never bring it up.  He did.  A reenactment is as follows - 

The SS: "I got the latest package - with a sack of potatoes and the jewelry quote."

Me:  "...I'm sorry, what?"

The SS: "I got the jewelry quote.  I thought that kind of thing was supposed to be a surprise."

Me:  "...I'm sorry, what?"

The SS:  "That stuff doesn't freak me out anymore."

Me:  "Oh...yeah...nobigdeal..."

It was one of those moments when the tables suddenly turned, I panicked having been caught completely off guard and I really didn't think that this was an appropriate time for shrieking-with-overwhelming-joy into the phone.  That we'll save for something more official with sparkly deal-sealers and whatnot.  It was a GOOD day!

Then I went shopping.  My way-too-expensive jeans will be ready at the tailor tomorrow.

Because I'm required to write [creatively]...edited

One down, five to go for the final portfolio.  Writing poetry feels extremely awkward.  We'll see what everyone else has to say maybe not in tonight's class but soon enough...  [Soon enough was tonight.]

On the Freezer Door

We are staring back against
A gloss-pane, beyond camera’s eye,
Wrapped in Georgia heat,
And a moment’s brief paragon.

Held up with words like together, like entwined.

A boy, olive faced, squinting eyes,
A girl, blushing-hot, striped with noon-light,
Her white, white dress against July skin,
His strange complexion of small squares,
Collecting in desert boots.

This is Certainty--

She smiles to the right and he laughs,
At something she can’t remember.

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Now I picture things

He called today and my fingers startled.  I was in class in the midst of a heated discussion of Wordworth's "Prelude."  I was feigning some level of interest with my mind and my hands wrapped around a phone clasped beneath the table, not the epic, not the story.  

It had been five days (which maybe isn't that long considering deployment) but it was long enough to make an anxious woman out of me.  Last week was more challenging than the ones before.  Late at night I ached for him, I still ache for him - just to make faces at me from the other side of the sofa or grab me in the kitchen for an exaggerated dip, the crown of my head nearly brushing the floor, or the word trying to glide from his lips, "sweetheart."  

I've gotten used to feeling nothing, but it isn't me.   Even though I wear it, it feels funny on.  Then on the phone he thanked me for this silly card I sent a month ago, sprayed with my scent and covered in lipstick kisses.  He said that it made his day and despite his delayed gratitude he wanted me to know.  There is so little of us in this condition.  We are maintaining what exists when he's home and so the blips of thoughtfulness have a fracturing effect.  This painful equilibrium crumbles so that I can hear him again in my thoughts.  

He says, "That wet towel on the bed will mildew."   

He says, "Half a jar of Nutella will spoil dinner."

And, "Sweet dreams.  I love you."

Home-sick

I wonder if it's just me that ever feels this kind of weightlessness, like tugging on strings that never pull tight--just small.  Tonight I think that I could jump up and down and shout without acknowledgement from the universe.  And really this is just about realizing how little control I can possibly have at all.  

I'm not sure to what I should attribute this existential panic.  Maybe realizing that he will always leave as long as he does this.  Or perhaps it came when I concluded that the emails I send him don't really get checked, and I can't call and that makes me feel completely...powerless.  It could be a number of other things, really, but those are the likely culprits this time around*.  

Everything here is a little off balance.  I like to think that I've mastered this, that I am exempt from any more rough days and that the short calls I do get are perfectly enough.  When I overlook the telling symptoms that a hard night is coming, I not only feel the initial want for him, but am then also angered for being caught off guard.  This is another one of those nights.  I can be found planted on my sofa in sweats, dwelling on the stories he doesn't get to hear.  Those that he does are abridged or outlined with lost punch lines and a diminishing presence of laughter.  They feel boiled down to hurried transactions, and knowing that he doesn't read the heartfelt emails only adds to my overall sense of impotence.  I am pretty much an ineffective little thread in this great, grand scheme and I hate that.  He can call me, but I cannot reach him even through methods that should.  I am cookies and quickly penned notes with smiley faces, minor and inessential.

-------------------------------------------------------

*this panic surrounding things I cannot control is my usual disposition 

It hasn't felt like home [before you]

The end of another day, and a busy one, busier than most Mondays. I stayed at his place last night to do laundry, and yes, also to be around his stuff. But I overslept and had a babysitting commitment this morning. Even rushing I got my coffee made and drove his monster truck to keep the battery charged. I pulled in a mere seconds before Jen and baby, luckily. Then an hour coaxing her stand, and because we are both so fashion forward, Baby Girl and I paid our daily homage to What Not to Wear.

After Children's Hour at Chez Moi, I had to go back to his house to get my clean clothes and drop off his gas-guzzler...and take the trash to the dump before my afternoon class. I also stopped by an antique store to look for a subject for my latest project idea--a bar for my giant, beautiful dining room.  In one of the latest Domino issues, they made a bookshelf into a bar/sideboard.  Something kind of like this:

(thanks apartmenttherapy.com)

...except I want a dark wood for the outside and an orange background, something warm and pumpkin-ish, not periwinkle.  I devised a plan for said [untouched] dining room: if I can get myself excited enough about decorating it, then I will surely be compelled to fill the china cabinets with china and stemware currently forgotten in boxes, and to clear off my sprawling dining table turned catch-all and care-package-central.  To accomplish this task I raided Pier 1 this weekend, stocking up on an armful of [fake] poppies and varied greens and four curtain panels in rich browns and firey red-oranges.  It's the final room to be tackled and my favorite, not to sound like the rest of the house is finished.  My bedroom is painfully in need of painting and cleaning, and all of those clothes that hang so gracefully on the closet bar are still scattered in my floor.  Still, the dining room has been neglected and it's time to wrap up this "getting settled" bit.  

I got to give The Staff Sergeant a virtual tour when we spoke via chat/webcam.  He said that the living room at least, looked completely different in a good way, which made my efforts seem momentarily worthwhile.  Until it's all finished, I power on.  I've hung curtains continuously for weeks...ok, maybe not exactly continuously, and found places for crap that laid homeless and lost in the corners of chaotic rooms.  All of this has reminded me of how much I dislike the moving process, and yet I know within a year I'll be doing it all again.

How good is a man that lets you look past the strife of separation, of uprooting, of packing all the minuscule pieces of your existence painstakingly in boxes to leave places that feel like home for new uncharted ones and then each night, also leaves you drifting off to sleep with a smile? 

I hate the phone [but I wish you'd call]

...or IM.

And then he did, rousing me from a Sunday morning slumber. I've never been more happily woken, except, well, there were some mornings when he was here... We christened our webcams with funny faces and smiles and then mimed along with the text. There was a problem with the sound so we made do with written words and motions, though they were lagging on a typical delay.

Now it's finally time for coffee. Oh, sweet caffeine!

And the rest of Bye Bye Birdie - Oh, sweet mid-century culture!

[One day you find out

This is what life is all about,
You need someone who
Is living just for you.
One guy,
One special guy,
One guy to live for,
To care for,
Be there for...]