Where do I start?

Blogging has been a favorite hobby of mine for years but last year I could never quite keep up at it. And I know why... it was because a very dominant thing in my life was my bad health and stomach pain. I had a hard time blogging without constantly talking about being sick, and that made me sad. I kept thinking "Well, I guess I'll just wait and start writing again once I'm better". Turns out its been a year and I'm still nowhere near better.

The one thing that has changed over the past months is that my pain attacks have now become my new normal. While I'm still actively trying to find an answer, I have also come to accept that this is just the way it has to be right now. I'm angry that I let the pain take over my life last year and I refuse to let that happen this year. So now, I make plans and I go places and I fill my social calendar - pushing away that voice in the back of my head that says "but what if you're out and the pain attack comes? what will you do? what will people think?" I will go into further detail about these "attacks" in a later post. For now, I just want to stick to a broad overview of life at the moment.

- - - - - - - - - -

It's been a year as of Monday that Jake and I arrived at Travis AFB which seems crazy to me. A year goes by so fast! We've settled into life here, finally finished setting up/decorating the house, become very involved with his flying squadron, and have made some wonderful friends. I'm especially thankful for that last point considering Jake left for a deployment 2 weeks ago.

Here are the guys on their way over to Kuwait. And yes, I do find it weird that a bunch of pilots flew commercially over there :)

Ahh, deployment. This can definitely be a touchy topic to talk about...

Jake is gone for about 3 months this time, coming home at the end of May, on a ground deployment in Kuwait. Although Jake and I are not new to being apart, and this is definitely not the longest we've ever been apart, it is really hard. The reason I say that deployment talk can be touchy is because there are two sides to voicing how I feel (and I assume this is the same for a lot of military wives).

The military side tells me that 3 months is a short deployment and Kuwait is a relatively safe spot for him to be... that I should be so thankful because so many other military families, ones with children to take care of, are facing 9-12 month deployments with their husbands flying in combat or on the war front... that we have it so good because we get to talk by phone or email almost every day, even if just for 5 minutes... that no matter the case there is always someone who has it worse. Military spouses as a general group know that we just have to suck it up, tough it out, and keep ourselves busy until they get back home. There's this unspoken acknowledgement between us - that we all know that it's hard but that there is nothing we can do; so we don't stop to give each other pity, we simply just keep going on with our lives and suddenly this unique lifestyle becomes the norm.

But then there's the other side of how I feel. What should I call this, the non-military side? This side tells me that whether its 3 months or 3 days, whether it's our first deployment or our tenth, that it does suck and that it's okay to be sad sometimes and to miss my husband... to not discount the fact that he's gone for "only a short deployment" because he is gone and because the 5 minutes a day that I am so thankful for will never be enough.

So yes, deployments are tricky but I seem to be learning a lot about myself in the meantime. So from now until June, I am filling my social calendar with everything fun I can think of and keeping very busy :)

- - - - - - - - - -

Another big decision was made this past month... a very hard decision.  I decided to quit my full time job with Papyrus. This decision was not made lightly but in hindsight I can see that 100% it was the right thing for me to do. I don't really care to get into all of the details but mostly it came down to my bad health (never-ending dr visits, so many sick days, etc). I never felt like I could give them my best effort when half the work week I was in pain, and I felt unreliable because I never knew when an attack would be coming on. My boss was so wonderful and offered that if I ever wanted to come back to work with them that the door would be open; she has witnessed my medical struggles during the past 8 months of working there and understood that it was the best decision for me.

The plan is for me to go back to doing blog design and I have to admit I am SO very excited about that! I didn't even realized how much I missed it until I started playing around with some new ideas. I don't plan to jump into it at warp speed though; I want to take my time, revamp my website, rebrand my image, and rethink my design focus. I'm so excited about this and so very VERY thankful to have a job that I love that I can do from home so that on the days I don't feel good I can choose to work in bed or even not work at all.

I should also throw in a HUGE thank you to my wonderful hubby. He was so supportive of me in making this decision and encouraged me to do what was best for my health rather than what was best for our bank account :)

- - - - - - - - - -

There are several other things that I want to still want to talk about but some of them deserve individual blog posts, and in an effort to not make this first post hours long, I've decided that I'll blog about the rest later. For now, you've been caught up on the "big things" and so I am now able to get back to posting the fun, short "everyday" posts about life, and I promise to include lots of pictures :) Thanks for reading!