Some days the busy bites back

My friends have joked that I'm not home enough to say I'm a stay at home mom. It's not uncommon for me to be out of the house a good chunk of day, every day. I plan my weeks so my days are fairly full, plugging up holes of free time. I have enough of that going on at night.

If you are a military wife you know the first and foremost advice about getting through deployment: Stay busy. Those two words shape my life right now. I am Queen of Busy. My busyness helps with not being as lonely and keeps my mind off Mike being gone and all the worry that entails, especially when we are a few days into the no contact zone of his missions. (I have talked to him four or five times in the last month. They are keeping him busy too.)

I never forget he's gone, actually he's always right there in the back of my mind. Because it's so apparent that he is gone that I can't ever get away from it. Everything I do pretty much screams "Mike is not around". I don't really mind, I think about him all the time when he's home as well. But it is nice to pretend I'm not thinking about it for a while.

But days like today burn me out. Swimming with friends, potluck at my house immediately after (which I only agreed to host last night once an illness popped up in the original hostess's family), unplanned ER trip with Ethan (Nursemaids elbow. Again. He's fine, got a sling this time.), Tristin's taekwondo class.

We did have another pot luck tonight for a friend's birthday but after everything, I'm just shot. And I don't know how well the boys would handle a mostly adult party (I think they would have been the only kids.) in a park, with a small jazz concert going on after a day like today. So, I sent my regrets and stayed home.

It is now 8:45 and the kidlets are in bed. I am going to refill my huge cup of ice water, grab my book and spend 2 hours in the bathtub then go to bed myself. That is a very excellent plan.

PS: Wanna check out some caffeine fueled ocarina/hoop/poi videos? Look here! I had a coffee for the first time in a while yesterday and I was almost literally bouncing off the walls. Good times.