Coping and finding a "sub"normal

I often wondered how families coped with the time apart from their loved ones during deployments. As I saw letters being closed and SWAK, the pride the little ones took in making sure the stamp was on "just right" ~ meaning that it was NOT perpendicular to the corner ~ and their names smudged almost beyond recognition before mailing them out, it dawned on me late one evening that it's a "subnormal". It's normal, but only under the surface. It's there, always lingering in everything they do. "They" meaning, mom or dad, whoever it is at Household 6 waiting for calls to gather everyone around the phone. Scooping up a poopy diaper in one hand, baby in the other as she trips to run to the computer when she hears Skype ringing her lovey's tune from the other side of the earth. It's the man who hugs his children, puts bowties in the girl's hair while wondering how he ever learned how to do it and why it matters so much that they match an outfit.

It's the grilling on holidays meant to remember those who serve, have fallen, or just those who have helped shape this great nation. The potato salad our son loves, because he IS his father's son. The finicky nature of the two youngest girls who love food, but definitely have their opinions on what is good and what is, well, not-so-good. It's Cameron's love for honey mustard dressing on his salad. This is ALL my subnormal. This is God's way of showing me John's existence in my life - EVERY DAY and in every moment.

I have lived as a military brat, married young and now am raising 4 children under the watchful eye of a daddy who is in a land far from home. The pride I feel in his sacrifice for our children to have a better future cannot be measured in magnets on a car, camo purses on my shoulder or ribbons on his chest, but rather in a more fluid measurement of peace and patience. I wait, because that's what we do at home. We wait, yet we continue to walk forward in our subnormal life. I keep feeling like I need a picture of a submarine inserted here: but I think you get the picture.

With the time that John has been gone these last few years, life has moved forward. We are walking along the same path, sometimes he leads and I follow and sometimes I lead and he follows, but we are always together. Yes, the distance between our leads may grow and then shorten, but we are always together - even if only held together by a can and a string as a means of communication.

I am frequently asked if I would change my life. I don't know that I would, because then it would be someone else's life and not mine. I live with the knowledge that I am not perfect and am probably way too open with my flaws, but it's the truth and it's honest. This is a hard life to live, it is not for the feeble or weak-minded. It is not for the woman who can't wake up without having someone beside her or tend to the babies nights on end alone. That woman CAN become a wife who is able to do those things. Military spouses aren't born with the ability to do this stuff, just as our counterparts aren't born with the knowledge of how to dial in a cannon or shoot a pistol - it is learned - practiced - perfected - and then lived.

I am in the perfecting mode of this life. Not MY life, but this life, the military life. This is my subnormal perfection. The smile on my face when my heart is crying. The cute outfit when my body screamed out for more sleep but instead I got up and put hemorrhoid cream under my eyes, covered them in white powder then some blush, don't forget the coffee!

It's ok to be angry at missing anniversaries and holidays, but those are days - not lifetimes and memories. It shouldn't take a special day to make one remember how special their loved one is to them. Valentine's Day shouldn't be the only day you get your SO a nice lovey card and flowers. Celebrate life, celebrate love, celebrate it all, every day - make that your new "subnormal" life.

The West Wing

go ahead and roll your eyes, I know it's out there!

I LOVE THIS SHOW!! I have been hooked for about 2 years now, the witty nature of the banter, the politics, the knowledge. It just works. It works for every reason a good show should work. I never watched it on Prime Time ~ what did I care about a show that was 100% about politics, not me! BUT, what I have come to learn and appreciate is that this is the way politics should work. No, that's not to say that I agree with every political POV, but in the end, with all of our differences, isn't life about compromise? Isn't life about learning and listening to our fellow man's take on life and love and education? So many lessons to learn and so few ears willing to listen.

What are we afraid of? Are we afraid that someone is going to do or say something that will rock the foundation of what we believe? If that is the case - BRING IT ON!!! I welcome your criticism and wonderment of why I believe what I believe. I welcome the questions as a means to teach you, and myself, more about what we think we know and reaffirm what we DO know.

I DO NOT want to be right all the time, I DO want to be engaged in educated debate. I DO want people to think about why they believe what they believe. I DO want people to question if they know what is good or reasonable, and if so, how they apply that to how they treat others and make life better for themselves and those they love.

I am rambling, but that's what I do. I talk with little sensor, I speak with my heart wide open, I love with all of my heart, and I give with little expectation of receiving. I do hope to be respected and loved in kind, but at the end of my life if all someone has to say about me is "Carla talked too much, but I know she loved me and was always willing to do what needed to be done or help when help was needed." I can live with that. That doesn't make me a bad person, it makes me a REAL person with real issues, real loves, real worries and concerns, and a real passion for making each day here with my loved ones as honest as it can be.

great new blog, take a look

just getting started, take a look and pass it around later if you like it. It won't be talky talky stuff, I am going to be writing a lot about my experiences with religion and using my degree to further discussions.

I would love feedback, but tolerance and learning is what the new blog is all about!

thanks, friends!

www.notyourtypicalx.blogspot.com

I'm Alive - and KICKING!!!

Hello, everyone! I am sorry I haven't posted in a long time. My hubby saw the blog and felt I needed to cut back on the information flow (he is much more private than I am). With that need for him to have a little more privacy, I needed time to think about how I would share what I wanted to share with giving him the privacy he needed.

With that said, I had almost two weeks of a great visit with a good friend of mine and her baby, Kelsey and Madison! It was wonderful and I will share some photos once I clear it with her. She did a FAB makeover on my drabby hair and gave me some color and a MAJOR CUT! Alexandra got a trim and a thinning of her mane (she needed that so badly).

We hung out and ate some great food and watched "It's Complicated" several times! **GREAT MOVIE and a must see**

I am back in high gear in organizing and getting stuff done around the house. We had our home built from the dirt up, and now we are in maintenance mode (which bites with John being gone and me hating that I feel everything needs to be perfect because he is SO that hubby to come home and obsess about painting needing to be done and whatnot).

The weeks are winding down in preparation for R&R. I am waiting for John to come home, I can't wait to see him and get some time alone with my Lovey. I just can't wait. This is marking the end of a long time living apart from John (4.5 years) and I am so ready for this to pass and then preparation for HOMECOMING!!!

Memorial Day was a little hard to swallow for me this year. With John being in A, I feel my heart hurting my a lot more than the first deployment. Maybe it's because I am older, maybe it's because I have more time as a wife and I hate not knowing about his job or where he is . . . maybe it's just the way it is. I don't know, but it all sucks.

I found this little write up and wanted to share it. Always feeling the need to defend what people think is a want/desire to be pitied, I found myself writing a little at the end of the original article. I refuse to be defined by my husband's job, rank, branch of service. I hate that people feel the need to define my life in those terms, but I also feel bad that they truly don't get "IT" - whatever that means in words.

Here is the original article:

The DifferenceBlabber t' yer mates
T'day upon the hour of 1:06 in the evenin'
The Difference
By Col. Steven A. Arrington (USAF Ret.)

When we consider the price the price the military pay for freedom, we need to remember the spouses. They pay a price, too. The funny thing about it is that most military spouses don't consider themselves different from other husbands and wives. Is there a difference? I think there is.

Other spouses get married and look forward to building equity in a home and putting down family roots. Military spouses get married and know they'll live in base housing or rent their homes. They must carry their roots with them, transplanting them frequently.

Other spouses decorate a home with flair and personality that can last a lifetime. When military spouses decorate their homes, their flair is tempered with the knowledge that no two base houses have the same size windows or same size rooms. Curtains have to be flexible and multiple sets are a plus. Furniture must fit like puzzle pieces.

Other spouses have living rooms that are immaculate and seldom used. Military spouses have immaculate living room/dining room combos. The coffee table got a scratch or two moving from Germany, but it still looks pretty good.

Other spouses say goodbye to their spouse for a business trip and know they won't see them for a week. They are lonely, but can survive. Military spouses say goodbye to their deploying spouse and know they won't see them for months; or for a remote, a year. They are lonely, but will survive.

Other spouses call Maytag when a washer hose blows off and then write a check for the repairman. Military spouses cut the water off and fix it themselves! (GUILTY)

Other spouses are used to saying "hello" to friends they see all the time. Military spouses get used to saying "goodbye" to friends made over the last two years.

Other spouses worry about whether their child will be class president at school next year. Military spouses worry about whether their child will be accepted in yet another new school next year, and whether that school will be the worst in the city...again.

Other spouses can count on spouse participation in special events: birthdays, anniversaries, concerts, football games, graduations, and especially the birth of a child. Military spouses only count on each other, because they realize that the flag has to come first if freedom is to survive. It has to be that way.

Other spouses put up yellow ribbons when the troops are imperiled across the globe and take them down when the troops come home. Military spouses wear yellow ribbons around their hearts - and they never take them off.

Other spouses worry about being late for Mom's Thanksgiving dinner. Military spouses worry about getting back from Japan in time for Dad's funeral.

Other spouses are touched by the television program showing an elderly lady putting a card down in front of a long, black wall that has names on it. The card simply says, "Happy birthday, sweetheart. You would have been 60 today." A military spouse is the lady with the card. And the wall is the Vietnam Memorial.

I would never say military spouses are better or worse than other spouses. But I will say there is a difference. And I will say that our country asks more of military spouses than is asked of other spouses. And I will say, without hesitation, that military spouses pay just as high a price for freedom as do their active-duty husbands and wives. Perhaps the price they pay is even higher. They do what they have to do, bound together not only by blood or friendship, but with a shared spirit whose origin is in the very essence of what love truly is. Dying in service to our country is not nearly as hard as loving someone who has died in service to our country, and having to live without them.

God bless our military spouses for all they freely give. And God bless America.

Here was my addition:

I just wanted to share this for all of the non-military peeps out there. This IS what our life is like. When you ask how we are and we are honest, it comes from a place of pride not pity. DO NOT take pity on us, as we do not take pity on your lack of service or understanding of what it means to dress up in a black dress when you are 9 months pregnant, with a deployed husband and listen to TAPS being played for a fellow wife, baby kicking in your belly and tears fall on your womb when you think of her loss and your newborn and husband who is coming home for R&R soon.

DO NOT pity the loved ones, yes, we chose this life just as you chose whatever life you live, but ours is public, yours is not. Ours is a product of Democracy, a Constitution and Bill of Rights that must be upheld in the most daunting of places when no one is watching or when CNN broadcasts it to you first. We hate the black cars we pass, praying it isn't for us and then feeling guilty when we realize it is for someone. But our family is happy to carry the burden of freedom, because freedom isn't free, but this family - my family - is strong enough to carry it. We do not carry it alone, we have family, and they are our family. Every single man and woman who serve under that flag are brothers and sisters in arms, and we are HouseHold 6, we will stand tall until they come home. We will embrace, cry, laugh, catch up on our lives and then, we will prepare to do it all over again.

HOOAH to my Lovey, Major J C McArthur, and his Army comrades and families who allow me to be a driving force in my husband's life and supportive in his career without making me part of the package deal 100% of his time at work!

OORAH to my USMC families, without you girls I would forget how strong I /amwas and the fact that the corps helped prepare me for the crazy life of an Army Officer's wife , and also how to be a KICK ASS Major's wife, thank you for teaching me that its not ok to pull rank or make others feel inadequate because they are newbies and low on the totem pole - everyone starts this way in life it's not just the military way, always remember that.

AIM HIGH for my AF families, I was raised in this life and loved it, love the people, loved the housing, thanks for allowing me to grow up under the booming sounds of B2 Bombers and after burners in the NorthernLights nights and Missile Silos

Full Speed Ahead fellow Navy families. Without you, my sister probably would have been in the Army and even more miserable than she was in the bowels of a ship working in a vault!

And finally, my NG familes. I cannot forget you all. You are the heart of my life now. You are the way I live and the reason I love where I am in life. I can finally have people relate to the fact that if my husband is deployed to new Orleans after a hurricane or Afghanistan or Iraq, the fear of harm is still there (of course, it's not the same, but it is there) and you remind me that if our men and women can wear a flag and honor it by serving overseas in our country's name, we SURE CAN ROCK IT ON OUR OWN SOIL!!! Let our citizens see what KICK BUTT people we have fighting for us and how they are here for our care also!

Thank you all, we may not all get along all of the time, but that's what families do. They have each other's back even when they want to throw a Thanksgiving Day turkey at one another!

Deodorant and Preteens

What is up with preteens and deodorant; I can't get mine to put it on and my neighbor's son carries it in his bookbag. It reminds me of my friend, we'll call her Angela (because that's her name ~ LOL). Angela and I had several classes together in junior high and the days we had gym, you were guaranteed a view of Angela applying her deodorant in math class - DURING math class. I wish I could remember our teacher's name, he was a cute little man, blond hair and blue eyes! The first time she applied her "anti-skunk" (as my dad calls it) our teacher stopped in his tracks and watched in amazement . . . or maybe it was horror! It became routine though, so I was in the back, getting the rear view of this occurrence.

I worry about how he is going to adjust to the children's maturation once he comes home. Alexandra and the deodorant and hair straightening, her singing and jumping around the yard to impress the boys in the neighborhood. She has always been a daddy's girl, and I hope she finds a way to make him her priority in her life once he is home again. She isn't the innocent dimple-cheeked little girl she was when he left.

Off to look for some books or articles for military parents/families to adapt to maturing children while they are deployed. Please send any suggestions to me, I am open to constructive comments and criticism!

Sorry for yet another random blog post. My mind is searching for things to organize in order to make my life make a little more sense than it has lately!

New Beginning

Today is the first day of my new blogging experience. I decided to use this as a means to write down my feelings during this chapter of our lives as a family. My hope for this blog is to keep our family and friends well informed on the major events happening in our lives. Our life as a military family has created many unique hurdles for us to jump and mountains for us to climb but with the love and support of all of you we will make our journey and succeed in reaching our goals.