SUNNY WITH A CHANCE OF FLUFFY COTTON CANDY CLOUDS

I am learning more and more the importance of taking each day as it comes. This means not holding on too tightly to yesterday, and not yearning for or dreading tomorrow too earnestly. Where I live, we are always somewhere between obsessively checking the forecast for limited knowledge to prepare ourselves with, or scoffing at everything the weatherman says because since when has he ever gotten it right? What a rough career that must be - a career of spreading distrust of you and your profession far and wide! Okay, sort of kidding. Sort of.

The truth is, the weatherman does have more information than the person who knows nothing about the warning signs of the weather. Even so, we would do well to remember that the information is not gospel, and often seems foggy at best (you knew it was coming). The weatherman may call for rain, but in the end he hears only a click and a dial tone and ends up carrying his umbrella around all day just to keep the rain away. If it's going to be cloudy, we may automatically expect dark, ominous storm clouds. But what if they turn out to be fluffy cotton candy clouds, like the kind you always wanted to jump in with Winnie the Pooh? If you're too focused on the crappy day you had yesterday, or too worried about the miserable weather that may or may not be your reality tomorrow, you might miss today's surprises.

When stinky days come, it's good to be as prepared as is reasonable. I'll let you figure out what "reasonable" means to you, because I'm still figuring out how to decipher when my own standard is practical and when it is an excuse to go overboard. It's good to have established self-care routines, an identified support sytem to lean on, and realistic expectations. Having a rotten day? Light the candles! Journal! Watch a TV show, call a friend, or cry for as long as your body will let you. But if you are constantly focused on preparing, you will exhaust yourself. I consider myself a generally optimistic person, but my control freak qualities cause me to think about the negative sometimes. There is a difference between accepting and sitting in emotion (healthy) and orienting your thoughts so on the future impending doom that you forget about today's sunshine. Basically, it's the choice between being the neurotic and overprepared-but-inevitably-unhappy Rabbit (still on Winnie the Pooh...), or the resiliently positive bear we know and love that acknowledges the struggle with a downtrodden, "Oh bother," before plodding onward with the uplifting thought of a honeypot waiting at the end of the day's journey.

The last few days have been great days. Some of those days, my man was gone. Some of those days, he was home. My favorites were when he was home, of course, but the other days were still pretty dandy. I read something a while back that suggested taking pictures of things leading up to deployment so that you don't find yourself looking back on year-old photos when you want to see his face and remember fun things you've done together. Well, last night was pretty great. We went to a PaintNite, which apparently is all over the country. If you go to www.paintnite.com you can enter your city and see where events are near you. It was a blast, and we got some fun photos of the experience. I introduced my husband to The Sound of Music last night, too. He hadn't seen it. I KNOW!!! Thankfully, he enjoyed it, and even conceded that it was almost a "war movie," which is what I described it as to boost its description along with "classic musical with references you need to understand."

Anyways, the point is, I wrote one of my last posts when my husband was gone for a few days and I really missed him and had a bit of a meltdown thinking about how hard the coming year is going to be. He's gone half/most of every week, but this time it really hit me that he would be gone. I am going to have days like that, and that's okay. I need to expect them, accept them with an "Oh bother," and be willing to sit in the emotion. I need to be willing to ask for help when I need it, and slowly dissolve the idea that having days like those are signs of weakness. I don't consider them to be weakness in other people, so I need to stop creating double standards about that for myself.

Like I said, I wrote one of my last posts when my husband was gone for a few days. The truth is, he's gone for a few days every week! It does make it hard sometimes, when I am thinking about deployment and he isn't there...or when I am missing him and that makes me think of deployment. But there are other days too. There will be clouds tomorrow, but don't put your money down on what kind they will be. Maybe they're the kind of clouds that pour down rain, and maybe they're the fun fluffy kind you can lay in a meadow with a Piglet and make shapes out of. Take each day as it comes, and enjoy the sun while it's out without making too much ado about whether or not you'll need your umbrella three months from now. The truth is, deployment is a cycle. There is a disruption to normal, an adjustment, and a roller coaster through it. I haven't been through one yet, but it is encouraging to know that even on a roller coaster there are high points. It would be a shame to miss out on the refreshing heights out of anticipation for the lows.