My best friend asked me recently how I did this MilSpouse thing, I’ve had a few other people tell me they don’t know how I do it and I know that other MilSpouses get the same comments and questions, too. It’s a tough gig, I’ll tell you that. The responses are many and varied and each of us does it differently. Yet we all have the same basic tools that we use and build on.

If you spend anytime at all trying to understand it for yourself, you’ll see that most articles and bloggers, other writers and advice columnists start off by telling you to “keep busy“. And at the core of dealing with military life, keeping busy is the single most important tool you have.

Some of us have jobs that keep us extremely busy and occupied, some have kids that keep them busy (and tired!) – others have their causes and hobbies, and still others have artistic ventures. There’s so many different ways to keep busy that it’s hard to pin point any one way.

For me … I have tons of interests and hobbies. For the year while he was down-range in Afghanistan, I had my job, I had my reading, my cats, I picked some TV show addictions. I had projects that I started – and most of them never finished. And I had sleep, lovely sleep. I learned a lot in that year; I read almost incessantly. And when I wasn’t reading or working, I was watching mindless TV or sleeping. I kept busy alright.

Oh don’t get me wrong!

You have moments when you feel you really, absolutely cannot go on. Those moments when the shit hits the fan and a big piece hits you in the face. You realize cleaning up would be so much easier if your other half was here. It’s a moment or two (or hundred) when you break and you fall on your ass on the floor and sob and blubber because at that moment, you are as alone as you have ever felt. And every time that moment happens, it’s worse than the last one. You literally break in half and settle into a puddle on the bedroom/bathroom/living room/kitchen floor. Pick one or all – it happens enough times for each floor to get it’s own special time with your face buried in it.

If you want to live, though … and you do because you know at some point your DH will be home and finding you on the floor in a puddle of unwashed, tearful misery is not the kind of image you want him (or her) to see … if you want to live, you will realize that food must be eaten, baths must be taken, bills must be paid, and work must be done. So you eventually pull yourself up from the puddle and wipe your face.

Then when you do that, you realize how positively septic you smell, and how ravenous you are and suddenly, the shit that hit the fan and how difficult it is going to be clean it up, is of far less importance than having a bath and eating some food. And in the eating of the food or the taking of the bath, you realize that the soap is almost done, or the towels need to be washed, but you’re out of laundry detergent… or curses! … you’re out of ice cream!

In short, you get past those moments of utter and complete despair and since life goes on whether you want it to or not, there are reminders that bring you back to the present and keep you busy again until the next break.

It’s a cycle. A long-time friend of mine once said to me that he savoured the emotional lows because they allowed him to really appreciate the highs. He wasn’t wrong… when you can survive through the lows, while you scrape the bottom and eat ice cream … then the highs are so much brighter and enjoyable.

It is being able to survive those lows that gives me my strength. I’ve survived some lows in my life. Oh boy! Some lows I thought I would never dig myself out of. Some lows where not even the brightness of the high was visible from that far down. Some lows where I didn’t know if I was going to make it through the next 5 minutes much less another few months. But I survived and I am here to tell you that the one thing that kept me going through a year of separation from DH … was the thought that one day he would hold me in his arms again.

And when he finally did …. it was absolutely the best thing in the whole world!

And oh yea – now that he’s here, I take every single opportunity to hug him … over and over and over again … because since the war isn’t over yet, I don’t know when he’ll be gone again and I want to make sure to store up as many of those hugs as I can for the days when I won’t be able to just take one.

You ask me how I do this? I do it because the alternative is inconceivable … now that I have found him, there is no way I am letting go of him. And when the army takes him away from me, I just think forward to when I get him back. And when he’s here, I make sure to maximise as many of the moments we have together as I can so that I have tons of memories and reminders to keep me going when he’s gone… and something to look forward to when he comes back.

And that is how I do it… because I can’t not. Simple – no?

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I am studying communications at the University of Phoenix Online and the course I am currently in is dealing with interpersonal communications. This week, we will be dealing specifically with cultural barriers to interpersonal communication. One of the week’s resources is to watch a series of interviews with people from different cultures talking about their integration into the community the now live in and how it differs from what they call “home” originally. One of those videos is the inspiration for my post today.

I posted this photo on my Google+ profile today. My post said that I’d forgotten what awesome photos I used to take and I said where this photo was taken. Years and what seems like a lifetime ago, I took this photograph on the coast of Jamaica, on the Palisadoes strip, just outside of the Norman Manley International Airport. The photo is from a different time in my life. I was my own woman then and no one else’s. I had already met hubby I think, but the relationship at that point was not yet formalized into anything other than a fascination. Neither of us had any clue we would end up where we are today.

The day I took the photo, I was out with friends on a fishing expedition. If I remember correctly, this was the day I caught my first fish. A tiny little thing that I threw back in almost immediately so that it would be able to breathe and continue to live. I was a hardcase. People called me “bitch”. But I could not catch a fish and let it die.

I worked in the corporate world and I earned enough to be comfortable on my own. Internet was a staple. I had ditched my TV cable service a couple of years before because I rarely watched TV and anything I wanted to watch I could get on disc and watch from my player. Or just watch on my computer.

There was no such thing as worrying about credit ratings. You paid your bills so that you would not have a disruption of service. You tried not to get into too much debt because banks charged exorbitant interest rates on credit cards. Debit cards had recently (within the previous 10 years, that is) become the latest convenience yet quite a few merchants still did not accept your debit card for purchases.

Cell phones plans could be had on a prepaid basis and all cell phones available were sold at a subsidized rate. Phones were “locked” to a network because that network had possibly invested money in importing your phone and wanted to ensure they got your money from calls as well as. “Unlocking” of phones was possible, but only if you wanted to travel abroad and slip a foreign carrier’s SIM card into your phone whilst you were abroad.

The beach was taken for granted. It would always be there, so I didn’t feel the need to visit it that often. Every chance I got, however, I drove north out of the city just for the hell of it. There was nothing I loved more than a road trip to the countryside – especially if it took me into the cool interior of the country.

Coconut water was most certainly not taken for granted. I would order a gallon a week and it would be finished in a matter of days.

Life was good. I wasn’t happy, but I was satisfied.

Fast forward 6 years. I am sitting in my “office” – the middle bedroom of a 3 bedroom house – in Olympia, Washington. It’s freezing outside. We had some snow today – the kind that is really just frozen rain but it looks white. Hubby lit the wood stove twice today but the house is still cold. I am wrapped in a blanket, doing schoolwork at 4am and writing – something I would never have dared to do in Jamaica since Monday morning meant work at 8am. Now, to go to work, I simply have to open a browser window.

We are bound by the military. Well hubby is. I can leave for Jamaica anytime I want; hubby can’t. Even if he could, it just isn’t in the budget. Contrary to popular belief, money does not grow on trees here – much to my consternation.

There is no coconut water. Well, none like I have ever tasted anyway. The ones I have sampled are bland and tasteless and no matter how good it is for my now soaring blood pressure, I refuse to drink them.

There is no beach of the likes we have in Jamaica. No such thing as gentle surf, white sands, coconut water and blue waters. Here, the beaches are grey and rough and freezing cold.

Here you pay your bills or you’ll never get another credit card, loan, or checking account ever again.

Cell phones are subsidized so long as you commit to 2 year agreements to continue service with the carrier … otherwise you pay an exorbitant amount of money to go somewhere else.

I am ecstatically happy but life is much different from it was in Jamaica; more restrictive.

Americans don’t know how to make you feel at home in their country. There are constant reminders that I am not from here and while I could care less about those who choose to hold that against me, it is still something you will never have to encounter as a Jamaican in Jamaica. I tell everyone the reason why I love Washington so much, and in particular the Seattle/Tacoma area, is that I feel less out-of-place here than I have felt in any other place in the United States – and I have been to many places in New York, D.C., Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and Maryland. Here, I feel less like a black girl married to a white man and more like Camille than I have since I left my home in Jamaica.

‘Farin’ not so wonderful unless you can find that one thing (or person) who makes you happy. If it weren’t for hubby, I think I’d be on the first plane back home to Jamaica. I hate the heat, but I hate feeling out-of-place more.

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I met Paul the Wood Guy today.

Paul is your quintessential red-cheeked, cheery old man. He’s a few inches taller than I am, he’s sturdily built, salt and pepper hair balding on the top (more salt than pepper), twinkly blue eyes and the most contagious smile I have ever seen. He knocked politely at my front door about 2pm this afternoon. And I am not one of those people who regularly qualify emotionless actions such as knocking too often. But just the way he knocked sounded very polite. He didn’t ring the doorbell as most people would, he knocked – three times, softly enough that it wouldn’t startle me yet loud enough that I would have heard anywhere in the house so long as I wasn’t playing loud music. It was polite.

I had called Paul yesterday when I realized that it was getting colder and that 2 bundles of firewood a day was not going to cut it – especially if I needed to go get those 2 bundles everyday. I googled for firewood near where I live and ended up with Paul’s number from the recording of another guy. You see, the guy I called had stopped doing residential wood but he recommended to other guys who still did.

Paul was the second number he suggested. Oddly I didn’t take note of the number for the first guy. Just Paul.

I called Paul and he was all “Gosh! So nice of you to call! What can I do for you?”

He put an instant smile on my face. I said, “Well, I got your number from…” and I could hear the smile in his voice when he said “Oooh! You need firewood! Golly!”

I swear. Paul is all about “Gosh!” and “Golly!” and “Geez!” Jolly is a real understatement.

Paul patiently explained to this Caribbean newbie all about burning wood. He explained wood sizes, shapes, age. He explained why we call it cord and what a cord is. He explained different types of wood and what they meant. Told me the type of wood they provided. We discussed fir trees for a while because in Jamaica, we have pine trees, which is a kind of fir tree. Here in the Evergreen state, they have a ton of different kinds of fir trees. He explained that he would deliver the wood already chopped and help me stack it and explain why we stack how we stack and explain to me how to get it ready to burn.

Paul and I talked about me being from Jamaica, and hubby being from Michigan. We talked about how we met, how long we had been married, the fact that we were military and asked where we had been assigned before Fort Lewis. He talked about being in the military himself and that he and his wife still shop at the post commissary. And then he would extend a discount to us because we’re military.

And this was just the “introductory” call. Paul draws you out.

Paul said he would get my wood out to me as soon as he could. Probably in the afternoons because they use the daylight hours to chop and stack. He said he’d call when he was coming and could I give him directions to where I was. I warned him that my directions have been known to suck royally and end up causing people to get lost more often than not. He laughed and said that I couldn’t be all that bad because I sounded like I could give him perfectly good directions. He said to give it a shot and he’d do the rest. And I did.

So when Paul knocked politely at my door today I was surprised that he had arrived here without any issues. When I asked him how my directions turned out, he said they were perfect.

While Paul was here, he chatted to me. We talked about hubby and the course he is doing. What it implied about how his superiors felt about him. And he invited us out to his place to “commune with nature”. He described it to me and it sounds like a real woodsy heaven. And Paul asked me whether we were interested in finding a church to go to. He explained what his church was all about and I talked about the Methodists and that they were an offshoot of the Anglican church.

And when Paul was done stacking my wood for me, he asked to pray with me. He asked if I would be offended. I said that I wasn’t Christian but that I wasn’t ant-Christian either and that I sure wouldn’t mind if he prayed with me. And Paul did. An impassioned prayer for my health, hubby’s health, our success and our happiness. And he thanked the Lord for bringing us into his life.

When Paul left, I was smiling like I don’t think I had smiled for 24 hours. He lifted my spirits like I can’t begin to explain to you. He is a blessing. He is a glorious and angelic soul. And I thank the Goddess for bringing him into my life today … just at the point when I was feeling down and alone and in despair.

Who says miracles don’t happen?

Edit to say that when I told my Mom this story, she said I’d been touched by an angel.

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It’s election time in Jamaica.

Everyone I spoke to just after the announcement was irritated that the politicians had chosen to announce elections at Christmastime – as was I. Elections in Jamaica are traditionally tense with activities such as avoiding wearing certain colours, being excessively careful not to mention any political affiliations (or lack of) and staying away from certain parts of the cities and towns.

I won’t go much into the why behind the tension and violence that has been known to surround Jamaican elections. Suffice it to say, the politicians themselves in the early days were the ones specifically responsible for introducing violence into the process. That it has perpetuated over the years is the result of ignorance, and a most unhealthy glee at besting political opponents.

Early on too, colors and symbols became very closely related to the political process – green for “Laborites” and red for the “Socialists”; the “bell” for the Jamaica Labour Party and the “head” for the People’s National Party.

Which brings me to the point of my post today. A friend stated on Twitter that he had put two of his favourite shirts away for the season earlier in the process. Another friend claimed, this morning, that she found herself signing along with one of the election jingles. I responded by saying I hoped no one in “red” had heard her. And it hit me: red and green! Those are traditional Christmas colours, aren’t they? And if they work together at Christmas to help add to the cheer of the season, then why couldn’t the work together in the political arena to help demonstrate harmony? You would have thought those two colours could do nothing for each other – and normally you wouldn’t be caught dead in an outfit that had both prominently featured. Yet at Christmas, everyone is adorned in one or the other and sometimes both!

I wonder how much influence that symbolism had on the decision to schedule elections at this time of year?

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I think I finally know what I want to do.

I have always loved writing. As an avid reader, I have dreamed on and off all my life about writing thrillers along the lines of Stephen King and Dean Koontz.

My first Stephen King was “It”. I read it the weekend before my high school examinations were to start – examinations that made the determination whether I was going on to “sixth form” (pre-university level studies) or not.

My mother bought it for me in the hotel gift store where we were staying for one of Dad’s annual meetings. She bought it on the agreement that I would promise to only read it once all my studying was done.

Now that I look back, I realize that my mother was no fool. She knew exams had only just begun. If I was to wait until all my studying was done, I would have waited at least 3 months to start reading. She knew that once I had the book in my hand, I wouldn’t be able to resist reading it. And read I did. The book was bought on Wednesday evening. By that Sunday, I was done. When I say I was an avid reader, I wasn’t kidding.

I used to write a great deal too – in my journals. I wrote tons and tons and tons of words in my journals. A lot of it was stream of consciousness – just random thoughts jammed onto the paper as they occurred to me. A lot of it was repetitive anger and frustration. A lot of it was obsessive musings on situations that I had no control over. Ranting to myself gave me a sense of peace.

I even tried writing poetry and short stories. There is one story that I am holding onto because deep down I believe it’ll make for a wonderful story. But for some reason, I can’t get started on expanding 1400 words to a full fledged story.

I write articles – when I get the motivation and the subject matter to write about – but I feel blocked most of the time. In fact, the state of my blog demonstrates just how blocked I am. I haven’t been able to really write for a long, long time. I tell myself that it’s for this reason or the other … but I really have no idea why I am so blocked. And I spend a lot of time agonizing over why I am blocked.

Then I stumbled on a career description today that just sort of … “spoke” to me. It’s the description for the copy editor; an editor that edits for spelling, grammar and factual integrity.

It is the career that goes with my never decreasing need to correct every single grammatical and spelling error I see or hear. It’s the career that goes with my need to know the meaning of and usage of each and every English word ever created. It’s the career that goes with my love of researching random facts and always knowing what it is someone is talking about so that I can determine whether they are full of shit or not. It’s home.

And, as luck would have it, I am in the perfect program at the University of Phoenix to help me attain such a career.

Whether it’s too late in my life now or not to make a change like this remains to be seen – hell maybe I’ll set up my own service. We’ll see. All I know is that I want to help people put out their best when they write. I want to help writers sound like they know what they’re talking about and to actually write English with some accuracy. It might even help me eventually write for myself – someday.

But … I think I finally found what I want to do when I grow up.

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