Barnmaven

I Need Some Wind for my Sails

Its the end of another week and I am so pathetically grateful to not have to get up tomorrow and put one foot in front of the other while pretending I have it all together I could cry. 

The stress of fending off the world seems to be cumulative, and yesterday I got the good/not so good news that SG might be staying longer on this Nebraska job.  Yay, because its more money into the pathetically empty coffers, but really, BOO because he won't be here for Thanksgiving and I'm so lonely and so tired of dealing with everything and not having my husband at home to sit down after a long day and talk to over a nice glass of wine.  I still have the glass of wine, but the dogs are less interested in hearing about my day than they are in having their dinner RIGHT NOW PLEASE.  If it wasn't for the evenings I get to stop at my parents and visit before I take the kids home I think I would give up the attempt to stay sane.

My struggles pale in comparison to what's happening over in New Jersey and the outside buroughs of New York City, so I should quit complaining.  No matter what's happening in my life, there's someone somewhere dealing with something a hell of a lot worse.  See?  Mindset changed.  Gratitude abounds.

Mr. Race Car Man had a good start to his school year, but has been struggling the last few weeks.  His good days still outnumber his bad days. Last year he had to earn the letters K-I-N-D-L-E by displaying expected behaviors.  If he earned all six letters, he got to either play on my Kindle Fire or play games on the Wii.  This year, since he's older and has gotten better with his skills, his teacher upped the ante and now he has to earn the letters P-L-A-Y G-A-M-E.   If he doesn't earn all eight letters he doesn't get Wii at my house or Playstation if he's at his dad's.  Since he's absolutely mad about gaming, this is a very big incentive for him to master his behaviors and his responses.  He earns his games more days than he does not, but the days he doesn't are really tough days, not just for him but for his teachers and classmates.  Monday morning he decided to run away rather than get on the bus, and my friend Debbie who watches them in the mornings, the aide from the bus and my daughter had to go on a merry chase around the neighborhood to catch him.  The upside of having a very tall and strong daughter is that she was able to nab the little turd and carry him on to the bus.  He then went on to have a very rotten day at school.  I hate those days, because he is so upset and fixated over over not getting to play his games.  Eventually he can be distracted, but he's got to go through his process of coping and folks, it ain't fun.  I feel bad for him, for his classmates, his teacher, and for those of us at home with him.

Fortunately we already had an appointment scheduled with our psychiatrist for Tuesday morning.  One thing I like about our psych is that he doesn't just ask me questions, he asks my child questions and carefully responds to him.  Throught a very calm and methodical interview, we were able to piece together some of the things that were going wrong for Race Car Man at school.  He is having great difficulty focusing in class.  He is very easily distracted by other students physical and verbal behavior.  This frustrates him greatly and makes him more likely to have difficulty controlling his behavior.

The psychiatrist made a med adjustment which we started immediately, and so far it seems to be helping.  Two fantastic days in a row doesn't mean as much as a couple of good weeks, so I'm not going to commit to saying "it worked!" -- but I'm encouraged. 

He can be such an engaging child.  A lot of adults we encounter who don't know he has autism, if he's having a good day, are usually charmed by the way he interacts with them.  He loves to explain things, and with his extremely detailed memory and his love of reading information books rather than fiction, he can actually converse about a lot of things.  Combined with his extensive and very precise vocabulary, he seems far beyond his years. 

I wish he'd eat, though.  We weighed and measured him at the doctor's office.  Since last school year he's grown three inches but gained no weight whatsoever.  I can't find pants to fit him that don't leave his ankles and half his shins exposed.

One of his favorite new activities is to brush his sister's hair.   Its almost to her waist now, and I found a special brush at the local beauty supply that lives up to its claims of being "ouchless."  He will sit behind her in the chair at my desk, and while she plays a game he brushes her hair.  Whenever they do this my heart just melts.

So things aren't as good as they could be and they aren't as bad as they could be.  I just feel drained right now and unable to cope with even the smallest setbacks.  Maybe Race Car Man isn't the only one who needs a medication change.

 

Cats are for soaking up tears

The nights when the kids are at their dads are simultaneously awesome and terrible.  The house is so quiet.  Too quiet.  I shuffle around in my slippers, turning off lights, locking doors, talking to the animals as if they could understand and respond.  Crazy cat lady.

Back when I was newly separated I had gotten in the bad habit of letting the dogs sleep on the bed.  Three big dogs, nicely filling up the empty side of the bed and making me feel somewhat less alone.  Except there's a problem with dogs and beds.  Pretty soon they think they have a right to be there, and if for any reason you don't want them up there, they sit on the floor and whine incessantly.  Or they growl at you when you want to move them.  Or they take up so much space there's not much room for you any more.   Not a problem - so long as you don't ever get remarried.  It turns out that teaching your dogs to stay off the bed takes just about as long as it takes to teach your kid to sleep in his own bed:  three nights, and the occasional slide into bad habits.

Cats are a different story.  Cats do not take up an excess amount of space.  Cats, unlike small dogs, do not burrow under the covers and do their best to put their nose in your private parts.  Cats, if you are not allergic, are wonderful heat sources.

Juliet has slept with me most nights the last couple of years.  If she's not sleeping with me she's in my daughter's bed, but most often she's with me.  She will leap up next to me, knead the covers a bit, then plop herself down with her back pressed up against my stomach.  I pet her a little, and she purrs quietly, making soft snuffly noises.   At some point in the night I will roll over, and she will use this opportunity to crawl under the covers and rearrange herself in the curl of my belly or behind my knees.  We have a predictable and comfortable arrangement, she and I. 

There are times of late that my bed seems huge and empty, there are times when the fact that I am lonely hits me like a freight train.  There are times when I realize that my closest and dearest sleeping companion is a cat.  Then I start to feel a little bit sorry for myself and the tears flow.  Once Fortunately Juliet doesn't mind getting a little bit soggy. 

Comfort, thy name is Cat.

 

 

Depression is a Motherf'ing Liar, and other stories from the black hole

Depression tells you that you aren't good enough.

It tells you not to pick up the phone and call anyone for help because people don't need to be bothered with your petty problems.

It tells you that no matter how much the people in your life tell you that they love you, no matter how much fun your friends might seem to have when they are with you, no matter how many times you've been a loyal and loving wife, daughter, sister, friend, mother, it tells you that you are a piece of shit loser who sucks and no one has ever loved you, no one loves you now, and no one will ever love you again.

When the man you love is telling you how beautiful he finds you, it whispers in your ear that you are hideously fat and ugly and that everyone agrees with its assessment.

When your children wrap their arms around your neck and breathe their stinky morning breath into your nose and say, "I love you sooooooo much, Mommy!" Depression counters with the fact that you are a Horrible Parent.

When someone at work compliments you or congratulates you on a success or thanks you for your hard work, Depression slaps you in the face and says, "Wait until they figure out what a terrible person you are.  They'll fire your ass."

When you dare to believe that you made the right decision to end a marriage that was sucking you dry and filling every day of your existence with anger, paranoia, dread, hopelessness and fear, Depression reminds you that you didn't try hard enough and you should have stayed longer and if only you'd been a better lover and a more giving, patient, caring, loving person you would have been enough for him.

When the sun is shining and your horse is waiting for you to come and share some precious hours in the arena or on the trail or just hanging out feeding him carrots and brushing his coat, Depression is of the opinion that you should close the shades, turn off the phone, get on the computer and stay inside all day.

When you think that maybe organizing your kitchen cupboards would be a good way to start feeling better about your house and your self, Depression tells you there's no point, everything's a mess anyway and your house will never be clean enough to pass muster so why bother?

When you begin to get frustrated with your annual winter weight gain and you set up a plan to start exercising more and eating better, Depression calls you a Fat Pig and says you're going to be fat and ugly no matter what, so maybe you should just eat another Ding Dong.

.....

Depression distorts your truth.   Even when you know that its a temporary phenomenon, even when you know all the things that you can do to make it a little less suffocating, Depression works hard to make you fail. 

It has been months now that the good days have been too outnumbered by the bad, and this needs to stop.  Depression needs to shut its lying whore mouth and crawl back into the bottomless depths. 

Because my real truth speaks to me a little more loudly this day.  Because I'm a competitive sort of bitch and no asshole named Depression is going to beat ME.  Because my family needs me more than you need me.  Because my mother told me to pick the very best one and YOU ARE NOT IT.

Where does it go?

I listened to Ann Tyler talk about her new book on NPR this morning.  Some of the plot is the result of the emotional processing she has done since losing her husband fifteen years ago. 

Tyler recalled her feelings around the loss, saying, "The thought that came to me was: 'I just don't understand. Where did he go?' He was this exuberant man who was a real enjoyer. And that's just gone without a trace. It's just not possible."

I considered my own exuberant SG, and thought about how quiet and how much more bland life is when he is not here. I tried to imagine how it might feel if he were never going to be here again and failed.  Put in the context of my brother's death, though, I think I understand.

I think love is a feeling but it is also a physical thing,  a set of behaviors and actions. Its both organic and contrived, innate and created.  I consider the love that I feel for my children, for my parents and other family members.  It is embedded in my bones, that love.  I've loved my parents and trusted them for my whole life.  The love I have for them is one of the cornerstones in the foundation of everything I've ever done and everyone I've ever been.  Loving my children came as naturally as breathing.  And when I think of them, shape their names in my mouth and picture their precious faces in my mind, a bubble of feeling that is too large to fit inside me wells up inside.  That feeling is love and joy and pain and worry and warmth.  Its the sum of all we've experienced together, all I hope and dream, all I fear.

Love seems a complicated tangle of physical sensation, emotional turbulence, concrete action and wishful dreams.  But what do you do with love when the person you love is gone? 

SG isn't here, but he's still here.  So I love him but I try not to think about how much I love him because it makes his everyday absence too uncomfortable.  I try not to think about how much I miss his touch and his physical energy.  I'm filled with love and pain, all tangled up and constantly needing to have the ends sorted out and tied up into a manageable knot.  That pain, though, is somewhat tolerable because the separation is finite.  He is coming home eventually, he's not gone forever. 

For the brother I've lost, though, what do I do with that love?  Its still there, full of hope and fear and memories.  I still had things to say, hugs to give.  I ache for wanting to hear the sound of his voice.  The enormity of what sits bottled up inside of me begging to be expressed, but without the human target of that expression, creates a feeling of pressure in my chest that is actually physically painful.  What do you do with all of that love you have for someone when they will never be here again to receive it?

Its not just the spirit of my brother that I loved, but the physical reality of him: His face, his eyes and smile, his unique nose and the shape of his hands; the voice that I could recognize instantly over the phone line that evoked the image of his face in my mind.    The human expression of all that he was shaped his physical presence and created the ability for us to relate to one another, to bond as family over meals and stories and shared experience.  The love my brother and I had for one another was reciprocal, had shape and meaning, helped to create the person that I am today.

And now he is gone, and the love we had for one another, what happens to that?  I don't know where to put it, I don't know how to properly express it.   What does it mean to the concept of "relationship" when one of the people in the relationship is gone to a place that we cannot go and cannot yet understand?

I see my children in one of those rare moments when they put their childhood fighting aside and I realize just how very close they are, and try to imagine one of them without the other and my heart crumbles into dust.

I have so many questions and so many feelings.  As yet I lack the understanding that I suppose will only come with time.  Just as love has a shape and a physical sensation, so I now understand, does bereavement.

Am I supposed to be over it already?  I hope not, because if grief is finite, I'm doing it wrong.  If grief is uncomplicated, I'm failing miserably.  My grief has a slippery volume knob, it won't settle at any one point on the dial.  Sometimes I can't hear it, and then some event or memory jostles the knob and it becomes so loud I can't bear to listen to it.  It goes quiet now for days at a time.  I sometimes even manage to forget about it to the point of no longer remembering that he's gone.  And I think of some future event and I imagine everyone who will be there, naturally including him...and the air is sucked out of my lungs as I realize thatwill never again be my reality.  Our reality.

 

 

For shame

Short post tonight.  The last few days I've had that periodic sense of wanting to crawl into a hole and pull it in behind me.  Everything is overwhelming.  I miss my husband.  I miss my kids after they drive off with their dad at night because its not my week.  I miss the sense of normalcy and calm that pervaded the house just a month ago when SG was home and even on downright crappy and stressful days we could at least just hold hands and hug one another, laugh at the crazy that is our life together and find countless ways to make it all bearable.

Still, there are things to laugh at and find at least momentary relief from my quivering psyche.

Like this:

Poor T-Bone.  Somehow he ripped a hole in his groin about the size of a fifty-cent piece.  I could see viscera and muscle...and I knew he needed stitches.  Which meant an overnight at the vet and anaesthesia, and $260 later (at least that includes antibiotics!) he's on the mend. 

I'm pretty sure if I duct tape him to the roof I can improve our satellite reception.

 

Aimless and Pointless

The internet is sucking the life out of me right now.  And no matter how jaded I think I've become, I so far continue to find myself reaching new and formerly unimaginable heights of cynicism.  Even when that tiny voice inside me insists that at heart we are all good and human and we need people to give us an inch to breathe, I think to myself "Bullshit.  We're all just a bunch of attention-seeking whores."  And then the little voice and the other voice start knocking the shit out of each other because no one can agree who's right and I refuse to put an end to the fighting by declaring a winner.  Its going to have to end in a TKO, ladies, sorry.

The extremes just get to me from time to time.  Its as if people ignore the wide gap between hatred and sycophancy.  You can't tell me there are only two categories of people.  The bell curve between hater and fan is long and wide.  Sadly, the reasonable voices in the middle are drowned out by the shrill screams coming from either end. 

I don't want to jump on anyone's bandwagon.  I have my own opinions, they may or may not fit anyone's notion of what's wrong and right, good and bad.  And for every person I've judged for the way they shared their opinion, for the things they said or the way they behaved, I realize I've done most all of those things too at one time or another.

I'm not being intentionally vague here, I'm not writing about any particular current internet drama or situation.  I'm writing about all of it - from a friend on FB having a fight with her mother's cousin about gays in the military to a two friends on a forum disagreeing about whether one person was being mean and hurtful to someone to the latest mommyblogger drama to the rampant and feverish rush of folks crucifying other folks over their politics and religious beliefs.

It just wears me the fuck out. 

Facebook, Twitter, news sites and blogs - I find myself exhausted within minutes upon visiting most any of them.  Something in me says that we have lost our collective way, that we are chasing rabbits and catching air.  That we have forgotten some really important truths about ourselves and our world.  That we are focusing - or being directed to focus on - things that are unimaginably inconsequential.  Is it because someone or something is deliberately trying to distract us, or are we just trying to distract ourselves?  Or is this just the way it always is and I'm only noticing it right now, and what is it that I need to ferret out in my conscious mind that's causing me to notice and react?

There are times when I find the general online discourse  - most of it, anyway - to be energizing.  And even now, there are pearls strewn amongst the pebbles.  You give me respite, you nameless writers, when I need something, some thought or word to give me reassurance that I don't need to cancel my Facebook account, delete my blog and unplug my wireless router.

Maybe its the changing nature of things that has gotten to me.  Despite knowing better, despite the dogged determination to really accept facts as they are - that everything changes and ends - perhaps I am fatigued by the constant evidence that so few of our lives are static.  Perhaps I loved reading a particular person's writing, frequently checking their pages for updates and adding my comments here.  And then their lives changed, dramatically.  Either they stopped writing or had a life-change after which I could no longer relate to them, or even worse, they became terribly ill or died.  And so someone I felt unreasonably close to, someone I felt I knew and had some insight to, they changed and they left me behind.  Or perhaps someone hit a rough and ugly patch and their voice changed from one of joy and compassion to one of ugliness and hate.  Or I simply had to stop reading the headlines on the news outlets because I could so rarely find anything positive or life-affirming.

Surely this will pass.  But will it be that the wheel turns outside of me and things circle back around, or will it be that the change I need is really just inside me, and as my mind changes I see through a different, a better filter that highlights the good and obscures the difficult?

 

Waiting on Spring

The recurring theme of my depression must be getting old for you, it certainly is for me.  Holy smokes, but its bad right now.  I was driving to work on Tuesday and as I went through the part of town where my folks live - they're snowbirding it in Yuma right now - I thought to myself how much I was looking forward to them being home, and pictured us spending time together, sharing meals.  And the sudden recognition of the jagged hole in the tableau of my family was like being punched in the stomach.

The situational depression and the seasonal depression are an overwhelming combination.

I've never tried so hard to conceptualize what happens after death as I have this last month or so.  In my heart I know my brother is in a better place.  Sometimes I can feel him as if he's just this close.  I get a strange sensation in the top of my head and it feels like if I just reached out my hand I could actually touch him.  And I realized that he's OK, its just that I am not because I have to go through the rest of however long this life of mine is going to be without him. 

There was always the four of us.  Many branches, many relatives and friends, but at the core of it, us four.  For good or for bad, we know each other better than anyone else.  All those years together,  loving, fighting, growing.  Sharing meals.  Sharing triumphs,  losses, experience.   Four corners.  Four posts holding the roof on the house that is our little family.   With one of the posts missing, the ceiling tilts madly, dizzyingly and feels as though it might just fall in.

That's when I have to try really hard to just stop thinking about things.

There are antidotes to this.

They DO help.

Trying to capture some video of Gizmo wrestling with the big dogs and laughing hysterically because I simply CAN'T post the bit where he's taking advantage of Roscoe being distracted by T-Bone and frantically humping him as fast as he can.  Gizzie simply doesn't grasp the fact that if either of those boys had a mean bone in their body he'd be the hors d'oeuvre they choke down before dinner.

Having Juliet adamantly pl0p down on the keyboard of my laptop because she has decided its time to stop working and start petting. 

Watching my husband rock I'm So Excited on Just Dance 3 for the Wii and laughing until the tears come.  Its so sweet and touching and completely hilarious all at the same time. 

Being cuddled at night by a dachsund, a Chihuahua AND a cat, all under the covers and all pressed so tightly to various parts of my anatomy that I can't move.

Joking with my dad on the phone.  Hearing my mom's voice.

Drive-time conversations with my children.  The hugs that seem to never end and yet don't last quite long enough.  The "I love you too's" that always come, even when they get a little exasperated with me telling I love them every five minutes.

When the moments come when I feel overwhelmed by the I don't understand WHY's and the sensation of falling and the choking sobs, these are the things that pull me back up and into the daylight. 

So I'll watch the dogs play and I'll pet the purring cat and I'll hug my kids and dance with my husband and talk to my mom and dad.  Spring is coming.  I'll get through this.

Where happy lives

I've been on a Buck Brannaman kick lately.  I've watched the documentary at least three times, and blew through his biographical book The Faraway Horses in about two days.   My trail riding partner Michelle and I are making plans to go watch him give a four-day clinic this June.  We've signed up for the incredibly long waiting list to ride, knowing that we likely won't get to do that, but also knowing that just watching him work with other people and their horses and listening to him teach will benefit us a lot in our own horse journey.

Buck's observation that whatever issues a person has in other areas of their lives will be reflected in their relationships with horses.  There are some incredibly concrete examples of this in the movie, and I'm sure many more on the 300+ hours of tape that hit the cutting room floor.  I see it in my own life. 

The mare I bought on a whim was sensitive.  More than sensitive - she would bolt at the touch of a feather.  If it was evidence of my own troubles that I added a horse to my barn that was drama personified, it was at the same time evidence of the working of God (or the spirit or the universe or whatever name you might give to Him) bringing me the challenges I needed in equine form to help me become a more balanced, calm and compassionate human being.

My standard approach simply did not work with her.  I had to learn a whole new sense of feel.  If all it takes to get your horse to respond is a half pound of pressure on the lead rope, why would you start with fifteen pounds?  And so I had to learn how to start with the smallest amount of energy and increase it only to the point where my horse responded to it.  I had - and continue - to learn how to recognize exactly when that response came in order to reward with a release more immediately.  To help my horse be able to make the connection between those two events.

And I took that mare as far as I could, and then my gelding entered my life, and while not the flight risk that little mare was, he is still a sensitive soul.  The only way to help him - and me - grow was to continue along that path.

And as I have worked on my issues through my horses, I have seen the results carry through to my home and work life.  I am not the same person I was two years ago.  I am a better parent, a better partner, a better employee, a better boss.  I'm not in such a hurry anymore.  I don't feel this frantic sense of urgency, I don't feel the need for everything to be resolved or understood NOW NOW NOW.  I am more in tune with others and how they react to me and to the way life unfolds around them.

Still, there are challenges.

The loss of my brother and the annual winter doldrums have brought a sluggishness into my days, a lack of desire to get out of bed in the morning, a heaviness of heart that makes doing the things I love seem less inviting.  And so I am learning that in order to keep the happiness in my life growing, I must apply some discipline.  In the same way that we make the wrong thing hard and the right thing easy so that our horse can learn in the safest way possible what it is we want from him, I need to create pathways for me to continue to do the things in my life that create joy and not those that simply lay waste to the potential of my life's moments.

I know that the terms "discipline" and "joy" might seem mutually exclusive, but I'm absolutely certain that there is a relationship between them. 

If I want to maintain a level of fitness that keeps me healthy, that provides the endorphins I need, that gives me the energy and mobility I need to be an active parent and to enjoy my horse, I need to be disciplined. 

If I want to make sure that my relationship with my horse continues to grow and develop, I can't just get on him once every couple of weeks and expect that's going to benefit either one of us.  I have to have the discipline to get out there a few times a week, even if its just to do groundwork or give him a good grooming.  He needs to have my attention, he needs to feel useful in order to be truly happy.  The time I spend with him is incredibly beneficial to me, it is one of the foundation stones of my own happiness.

Spending time with my husband and my children makes me happy.  But sometimes, especially when I'm feeling pulled under as I am lately, it seems easier to give my attention to a book or a social media stream or an email I want to answer.  Finding the joy in my relationships means applying discipline to the amount of time I spend online or disappearing into a novel.

Sometimes it is as simple as saying, Stop doing this and start doing that instead.  Sometimes I need to be even more authoritative with myself and schedule time for my joy.  Put it on the calendar, make a date with my husband, make plans with my kids or with a friend. 

And most important of all, I must take the time to savor those moments with the people I love, doing the things I love.  Death reminds me that life can be brutally short, that there might not be another time to express my feelings to someone, to hold their hand, to wrap my arms around them and hold them tightly.  Death reminds me of the pricelessness of moments spent doing meaningful things, even things as simple as stroking the small dog on my lap --  and of the futility of time wasted over pointless drama or feelings like anger and bitterness, jealously and resentment.

There is no time but now, but not everything needs to be accomplished right now.  Happiness waits to be found in being mindful of the way that I spend my time. 

This post was written in response to the question How do you plan to create happiness in 2012? from BlogHer's Life Well Lived section.  

Picking Scabs

I find myself circling in the center of the room, holding patterns, avoiding the loss swept into the corners.  So much pain there, so little of it truly resolved.  I pushed it away to forget it, and this new life keeps asking me to sift through those painful memories and feel them all over again, this time really feel them, so I can grieve them and let them go.

I like the center, I like the pretending part where even though I was hurt, I was tougher than the hurt and the pain didn't really touch me.  I like the middle of the room where I imagine that these things today are not monsters I helped create but that they are all somebody else's fault.  I fear getting lost down the rabbit hole of black, jagged edges where everything I was supposed to be able to trust in wasn't ever really real.  I don't want to be confronted with those feelings yet.  I wanted to wait to deal with them, wait forever as if that's all it would take to make them less painful.

That's the tricky thing about them.  You would think that time would blunt them, burn down the hard and sharp parts, soften the clout to the side of my head and ease the squeeze of the fist on my heart.  And then I find that no, there has been not one iota of change in those feelings of helplessness and grief and anger and excruciating pain.  Not one shred of lessening of the feeling that it wouldn't have happened if I had been better, if I had less ugly, less messy, less self-absorbed. 

Thousands of miles between you and I and there's no comfort to be found, no shoulder to hide my face in, no enabler to help me pretend the past isn't real and that now and the tomorrow is all there ever was or ever will be.  No strong hand to hold to reassure me that this time its different, that you are not the other one.  Every shattered nerve, every thread of anxiety that loops itself through my gut adds more miles to what already exists between us.  But really, its only me putting them there. 

Where do I find the balance between unfocusing enough to make the time pass more quickly and crawling into the hole with old grief and letting it burn its way out of my core?  How do I keep myself from dropping - no, throwing down - the lines of connection so that we can still be reached?

Trust comes so hard for me.  No, you are not the other. I know that.   Never have I had any reason to do anything other than trust you. But the ugly voice from the corners reminds me:  There was a time when I didn't have any reason not to trust him, either.  Open and transparent-seeming eyes looked straight at me, reasonable voices comforted me, soothed me and fed me buckets of steaming lies.  Which part is the part where I can distinguish between the real and the construct?  

And so I avoid the corners.  Let the things swept there lie a while longer.  

Counting things

I keep the pillow you slept on when you were home next to me at night.  Its a poor substitute, but I imagine it still retains the scent of you.  Sometimes it comforts me, but other times it just makes me miss you all the more.

When I can't sleep, I start counting. 

You left for the first job 65 days ago.

 41 days later you came home for 11 days.

We got married 15 days ago.

You will come home again in 36 days and stay for 5 days (5?  or 4?).

Then you'll go back to work and be gone for another 122 days, give or take travel time between this job and the next.

Altogether, when these three contracts are done, you will have been gone somewhere around 225 days altogether.  Over seven months.  More than half a year. 

I need to stop counting.   Its not helping me sleep.