Time Keeps on Ticking....

Yesterday was a good day for the most part. My husband is finally free to apply for other AGR positions, ones that might grant him the freedom to spend more time with his family. We have been counting down to that day for so long it seemed like we would never get here. Of course, we are almost positive his unit will squash any attempt to transfer... but the thought of this freedom is a little bit rejuvenating. He has put so much energy, time, blood, and sweat into serving his country and I could not be prouder!

(this photo was featured on the cover of Montana Magazine... amazing hubby I have!)

Today I sat through an interview for a job that I will most likely despise if I get it, and sometimes I think that it would be worth it to do what my husband calls "moving backwards" so that we can at least be happy with what we are doing with our lives. I honestly would rather live in an apartment than our current house, have no cable TV, never go out to eat, and remove all extras so that we could devote time to me finishing school, paying off debt, and getting to where we want to be stress free. 

Lately I have contemplated dropping out of school because as my emotions and mental capacity are stretched thin, my grades fall. My heart is no longer in this and I find myself wondering what I would even do with my Criminal Justice Forensic Psychology degree. I would adore working in law enforcement, but to do that I would have to loose weight. To loose weight I would need to quit smoking. It feels like too much. To work on the psychology side of things, I would need a masters and I can't even contemplate doing that because I can't fathom how I am going to make it through two more years of school. I can't seem to sit through homework because I tend to start applying for more jobs instead. My husband needs me to contribute financially but that mental worry is killing my mental focus on school. It's amazing the things that life drops on your plate. My mother always said that God never puts us in a situation He feels we cannot handle. Part of me thinks the way to handle this is not to figure out how to juggle it all at once, but to figure out how to NOT juggle it all and to streamline and trim the baggage from life. Time is the only way to tell... and perhaps some heart felt discussion with my husband about the future. All of this puts pressure on my physical conditions, and I fear that our inability to get finances figured out mean that I will never conceive the baby I so desperately have wanted for three years. Time.... how you torment me.

Expansion in an Expanded State

As most Montanans know, getting big name stores or exciting things in our cities is super fabulous. We jumped up and down when an Olive Garden opened an hour and a half east in Bozeman. My friend and I recently trekked to the two new stores in Helena and had an absolute blast! Ulta has opened here in Helena and it is essentially a massive hair, nail, make-up, perfume store. This place carries lines of hair supplies like Macadamia and perfumes like Coach, Versace, Juicy Couture, etc. All things that are not commonly found anywhere else. Annndddd... they have these really awesome and yet totally ridiculous lip thingys so you can get a sense of what lip color goes best with your skin tone. 

These little things are not even close to the coolest part of this place, BUT, I had to share as they are pretty fun! Ulta has opened right next door to Rue 21 and on the other side Shoe Carnival will be arriving soon. Our overly spread out state is expanding!

Hole in the Dining Room Wall

Progress is a beautiful thing... whether it be progress on my schoolwork, my exercise goals, or my marriage. Most noticeably it can be seen in my marriage. My husband and I had one of the best (and scariest) nights in our marriage this week and many issues came to the front of our arguments. I am not giving this as sound advice, or any kind of advice, but in my personal experience, I know my husband loves me because of the new hole in my dining room wall. When things came to an impasse, I decided I couldn't be married to someone who wouldn't put me first in anything. I packed a bag and walked to the door. My beautiful oaf of a husband had somehow determined I didn't have it in me to leave him and so I walked out the door and closed it, loaded my car, and called a friend to find a place to stay.

 When I came back a moment later, my beautiful husband was sitting on our couch and casually remarked he was going to have to fix the wall. As I noticed the drywall on his fist, I immediately burst into tears. It occurred to me that this fabulous idiot truly did love me to pieces. Jon is not an emotional person, does not show emotion hardly ever, and humor is his best defensive mechanism. That is how he was raised... his family subscribe in the worst possible way to the "if there is not a pool of blood at your feet, you better not shed a tear" mentality. I needed him to communicate his love for me in a way that was not natural to him and my frustration at him refusing to try led to this moment, where there was a hole in the wall, drywall on his swelling knuckles, and me sobbing at new realizations. This moment may seem crazy to some, but for the two of us it was one of the deepest and clearest breaths of air our marriage had ever taken. We were seeing each other on a new level. I realized he truly did love me and was desperate because he was not capable of showing it how I needed. He realized I needed him to try so badly that I was miserable enough to leave.

I would encourage each and every married person who finds themselves in a position to leave to look outside of themselves first. I have learned that I needed to stop asking myself what I wanted and needed over and over again. The question I needed to be asking was what does my spouse need and want? What can I do to make myself happy without needing them to fix it for me? I don't know or think that this will work for everyone or maybe even anyone, but it is starting to work for me....

One of those things...

Last night I managed to go for a walk with our pit bull. She is horrible on a leash and due to her massive strength, leash training has not happened yet. I decided it was time I leash train her or I would never be able to take her anywhere. The half hour I was out with her led me to ice my hand as soon as I returned home. Just before I had gone out, my husband had returned home from the field. He instantly climbed into bed and said he would talk to me if I went to bed early when I got home...

Arriving home and after prepping for bed, I climbed in beside my man and looked forward to a little chat. It didn't go that way. I brought up cable and all those other financial things and did my best to convince him they were luxuries and not necessities. He wouldn't have any of it and desperately held onto cable for football season. I wanted to pull my hair out. After we laid there quietly for a while, I asked him if he still thought I was fulfilling everything he wanted in a wife. He answered with the usual response: 'of course you do babe'. I gritted my teeth and prepared to bring up the other side of my emotional problems lately. I mentioned to him that he was not acting that way. Things progressed to the point of tears and the overall theme of the night was that my husband cannot bear to extend himself to complete something like purchase flowers, leave a good morning note, get up early enough for breakfast together, or anything else at all simply because his job in the military is taking so much out of him that there is nothing left for me. When I get super bitter about it all, I tend to notice things like he still has energy for my step daughter or video games or friends or beer or guns or anything that is his or that he loves.... just not me. It feels like we have been to this place too often over the last five or six months that I find myself for the first time in our marriage actually, and I mean genuinely, thinking about the "D" word. (divorce, for those of you who couldn't get that). I just don't want to spend my whole life this way. I am one hundred percent miserable and because I hid it for so long, my hubby still doesn't see anything about it as a big deal. Cue the nauseated feeling associated with trying to tell him about it. AGAIN.

It kills me to think about moving on in life without him though... I waited through a deployment for him. When have I waited long enough to have him back?

Alterations

Here I sit... I have made no progress on weight loss, no progress on homework this week, and I definitely have not made any progress on finding a job. I have two new interviews this coming week, but I cannot seem to get a second look from anyone. I am more than frustrated. The hubby has been in the field all week long and depression seems to be an ever lingering friend... kinda like a bad aftertaste and just when you think you have brushed your teeth and gotten rid of it, you burp, and dammit, there it is. 

I am exhausted of being exhausted. So this morning I Google "motivational quotes" and start reading. I tell you what! There is nothing like sitting down and reading that crap to guilt your behind into motion! So now I am sitting here making a list of everything I have yet to do as far as housework and homework go. I fell off the wagon and began smoking again two days ago, but now I am out once again and ready to charge on to the finish line. I am so tired of regretting my failures and being ashamed to be around people because I smell like smoke and look super heavy and eat really poorly. I think it is about time I feel proud of myself. 

There comes a time in every adult life where you realize that despite your opinion to the contrary, you have not grown up as much as you think you have. So among my lists of things I am going to tackle, I make spreadsheets of finances of what next hubby payday looks like. Things grow grimmer and darker with every pay period and bill cycle that passes while I cannot find work. When I last sat down with my husband, I suggested cutting out cable TV and using Netflix and Hulu plus alone. He was NOT amenable to this plan. My friends also often want to do activity after activity, the majority of which involve spending money and wasting our resources. It has now occurred to me that part of being a grown up is making the hard choices, sacrificing what we want to do for what we need to do... I am mentally preparing myself to have a sit down with my husband and to put my foot down on the cable and other issues. I am sure I will have one hell of a mouthful to follow that conversation! 

My mother used to have this saying she used whenever we didn't do something we were supposed to do or told to do. She would say: "If it is important enough to you, it will get done and be done right and on time. If you do not assign a task a level of importance, you will forget it and it will not get done". She was very right. We always devote ourselves to what we feel is important. So what does that say when we fight to keep things like cable TV, chocolate, and weight gaining activities on the agenda, but don't care to get up and go hiking, save money, quit smoking, and eat fresh healthy food. All of the things we don't fight for and don't do are the very things that will bless us with a long, healthy happy life.... somewhere along the line, priorities have seriously gotten out of balance. Time to do some alterations!