Saturday Soap Opera

Mom's back in the hospital again. Her blood pressure is through the roof. I guess all the problems with my sister are getting to her. She told me today that she was afraid for her life. T said she should come back to the house under those circumstances, but I am scared that if she does, things will go back to being the way they were.

T and I have been fighting quite a bit lately, especially about my family. My mom doesn't have the greatest track record, either. She has a tendency to be controlling and manipulative, and before she left, she didn't want to do any of the things she knew she needed to be doing for her health. I don't want to enable her to be detrimental to herself.

I also don't want any more damage to me and T's relationship. It's been seven years of hell with mom in the picture, especially with T's penchant for holding grudges...I understand that the grudges T has against my mother result out of a sense of loyalty to me, but that doesn't make it any easier to take when I get caught in the middle.

Oh No!

In my last post, I talked about how fragile the relationship between my sister and I is.  My sister is trying to make me let my mom come back home.

I don't want to do it.  My mom is going to go back to doing whatever she wants to do instead of doing what is best for her health.

The round robin of hospitalizations are traumatizing to the kids, and I have had it

A part of me is incredibly angry that my sister shows up at the eleventh hour playing the hero.  Especially when she doesn't know what these years have been like.

I just heard from the nursing home where my mother is.  They are transporting her to the emergency room, but she refuses to go to Scott & White.  Scott & White is a better hospital.

Ceasefires

Today I am sitting in my dining room typing this as my sister, nephew, and potential future brother-in-law are passed out asleep in my living room. Circumstance has turned us into somewhat uneasy roomates. With my mom's prognosis as yet unclear, and the arrangements of her placement still needing to be ironed out, the family has come together as best it can to attempt to weather this storm. I wasn't exactly sure this would work out; my sister and I are polar opposites in both looks and personalities in addition to the almost ten-year age difference between us. She's the social butterfly, the one with her finger on the pulse of every new trend. I am the aloof one, the one who likes to be around others when I am comfortable with it, but that generally prefers solitude over a block party. Last night, my sister told me that her job was able to transfer her to Texas permanently, but that it would mean she'd be working in San Antonio. Given that a two hour commute each way is impractical, that means she will have to move there. I was kind of hoping that things wouldn't work out with her job because then she'd stay in my area. We both realize that we are way to different to live in the same house, but the same area would be nice. It would be nice to get to know my nephew better, and my sons could use some constancy and some family in their lives too. They have been hurting so much with T gone. I had also hoped we could work on our relationship. She and I haven't had the best, and now that things are peaceful for the first time in a long time, I thought we could try to reach a common ground. I wish it didn't take my mom's diagnosis to bring us together, but life isn't made of beautifully poignanant, scripted moments.

Wine & Roses

The time of our joyous reunion is drawing to the inevitable conclusion.  I think I am doing okay at trying to hide my growing anxiety from T., but I don't know for sure.  I came close to losing it this morning.  I guess I was crying in my sleep without realizing it.

It's the part that I hate most about leave; it is the perfect amount of time to get used to having him around again, to get used to being his wife again.  I never stopped being his wife, but I missed the domestic rituals that made me so happy.  Like always trying to have our morning coffee together whenever possible...

I am so grateful that I have had this time with him and our kids, but at the same time, I can't help but be depressed.  I don't know when I will see him again.  I don't know when we will get to live as a family again. 

We still have no orders sending him back here.  This is the longest we have ever been apart.

Tonight, we are playing Marvel Alliance 2 with the boys.  I wish every day could be like this!

Hope on the Horizon

Yesterday was an incredibly stressful day. My Dodge had been starting sluggishly for about a week, and yesterday morning, she didn't crank at all. Two hundred plus dollars later, I discovered that my front brakes were worn thin. I went over to Just Brakes which cost another obscene amount of cash to repair. I was supremely unhappy with what the repairs cost me, and I did not get their advertised deal. That's the one where they claim that they can fix your brakes for a hundred dollars in most cases. Apparently, I wasn't the only one who didn't get that deal; there were other people there and some of their repair bills were eight hundred dollars and nine hundred dollars.

After that debacle, I arrived home and bought T's ticket. Today I received word that T might actually make it back home for good. After so long, I'm scared to hope...scared to even slightly entertain the possibility that he could be coming back to me. This is the hope I mentioned in the title of this post. This weekend holds alot of promise too. T is coming home on block leave and I am looking forward to family time. This could be the most awesome weekend in a very long time.

At least my car is running again and I have a pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream in my freezer that's just for me. Sometimes the simple things are the best conduits for true happiness...

SNAFUs and Gratitude

The Army has struck again and has done its best to make me scramble. T finally got a leave date yesterday, (even though we requested our dates in April)and of course, airfare right now is ridiculously expensive for a one way ticket. I really hate it when the green machine does that. It makes it difficult to budget and difficult to plan family time. Still, I am incredibly happy and grateful he's coming home. As an added bonus, he should be home for Father's Day.

Being an Army family almost gurantees that special occasions will be missed. We have missed alot of them over the years; some have been easier to replicate than others. This last Christmas, I found mistletoe on sale atthe dollar store. I bought a few sprigs and I hung them on top of the doors anyways. When he came home for R&R, we still shared a mistletoe kiss.

We used to have a lot of movie nights befor he left, where we would pile up on the bed with the boys and make popcorn and just be together. So we are definitely doing that when he comes home.

I'm so looking forward to assuming our normal routine, even if it's for awhile. I miss making food for him, I miss us all being together. I miss going to sleep with him and waking up to him in the morning. I even miss all the things that used to annoy me about him, and I find myself wishing he was annoying me, because that would mean he would be here with me.

I think that one of te blessings of being an Army wife is thatthis life forces you to really evaluate your priorities, and really value someone completely; their good and bad characteristics.

Cajun Cravings!

I am so happy. I discovered my local supermarket carries boudin! it's one of the few things I miss from when we were stationed in Louisiana. That, and the black squirrels. I had never seen a black squirrel before, and the squirrels over there are huge. Some of them look like housecats. I didn't get to take pictures of them, regrettably. So tomorrow, it's probably going to be crawfish etoufee, boudin, and red beans and rice. Wish I could get my hands on Lyndsey Buckingham's "Jambalaya" for some diner music. That version is the one that appears on the Steel Magnolias soundtrack, and I can't seem to find it anywhere else. Add this to the fact that the soundtrack is out of print, and I am completely out of luck.

I wonder if the supermarket has gator. Gator is delicious, and having lived in SoFla, I would rather eat these guys before they eat me!