New World

My husband separated from the Navy about two weeks ago. He did this voluntarily. We both hold bachelor's degrees. Two months before he separated, my children and I moved to our final destination so that I could start to look for a job, which I have been doing since our arrival.

Today is December 4th and I still don't have a job. This is depressing in its own right, especially since I have applied for such a wide range of things. We have no income except for unemployment, which hasn't started yet. We had to apply for food stamps and I have contacted local organizations about getting Christmas presents for my kids.

Last night, we were out of food and our food stamps didn't hit our account until six p.m. One of my friends ordered and sent us a pizza so that we could eat before 10 p.m. Today, one of my friends found out that we didn't have money for Christmas gifts so she gave me a gift card to Sears that she had so that I could buy a couple of things for my kids. She also sent me an old cell phone because mine is broken and we can't afford to buy a new one. The food stamp case worker pushed our food stamps through on the first day when she heard our circumstances.

I am awestricken by how awesome people are. None of those people had to do those things and they did them. They didn't even seem to mind, which makes them even more awesome. On top of that, I am extremely grateful that these programs are available to me and my family. We would literally have no food if it wasn't for food stamps. Had they not gone through, we would have had to go to a food bank. I am so grateful that there are organizations that donate toys to kids who wouldn't get much of a Christmas without them.


I can't believe that my family is in this place. I never thought I would be calling charitable organizations asking what kinds of outreach they do because I needed them for my family. This is a world that I never imagined myself being a part of. As I watch my son's school uniform get smaller and don't see my job prospects getting larger, I find myself wondering if there are organizations that donate such things or if I am going to have to hope that I strike gold at the thrift stores.

This is a new world to me and I find that it fills me with mixed emotions. I feel gratitude, shame, embarrassment, stress, appreciation, hope, and sadness. I have never been here before and I hope that I am never here again. I also hope that I am not here for long. This is a world that no one should have to live in, however this is a world that will make you feel differently about what you have, had, and hope for. It is also a world that will teach you about yourself and your loved ones.

The Final Countdown.

This week is the end of my life as a Navy wife. Five long years later, and it feels good. It feels good knowing that by the end of this week, the Navy will never force separation on my family again. It feels good knowing that we won't have to deal with the long hours, degrading pay, and Navy bullshit anymore. I couldn't be happier about this step in my life.

I am also appreciative because I know that the separations are virtually the only reason my husband doesn't want to stay in the military. He likes his job, he's good at his job, he has friends at work that he will be giving up. Dave makes an excellent sailor and the Navy has been lucky to have him. I am lucky to have a husband who's willing to make such a big personal sacrifice, just to be in my presence.

I am excited because I am in my home town, near my family. I am looking to enter a master's degree program that I am really enthusiastic about, which makes me feel amazing. I am excited to enter the workforce and to get a break from my children. I have a race coming up soon, I am excited to see how I have grown as a runner. I am excited because this change leaves me with so much to look forward to.

However, the biggest emotion that I feel is sadness. I miss Washington so much that I can't even explain it. I am so sad that I am so far away, and will now be dealing with a lifestyle separation, from some of the best friends I have ever had. I am sad that I won't get the chance to make new friendships, because I feel there are more than likely a lot of great Navy wives that I didn't meet. I am sad that we are giving up being a part of such an amazing community.

I am sad that my kids had to leave their friends and that I don't know when we will see them again. I'm sad that we are saying goodbye to the life that brought us together as a couple and the life that turned us into the parents we have become. It's a huge deal to leave the Navy life. I wish I hadn't taken so much of it for granted. The future is bright, but the past is luminous.

Respeck.

Free to Be Me.

All I want right now is to cut my hair, dye part of it blue, pierce my septum, and finish my sleeve. I have been putting it off because after five years of being a stay-at-home-mom, I am finally looking to get back into the work force. I am having a hard time finding a job and I think that if I make myself look even more different than I already do, I won't be employable at all.

It's bumming me out because I am me, and I am proud of who I am. I wouldn't have all of these tattoos if I didn't like them, and I don't regret getting them. Having tattoos and wanting blue hair does not say anything about me, other than that I like blue and I like tattoos. In fact, I really don't like needles, even though I am tattooed.

I have a degree, and I plan on getting a graduate degree. I am smart and hardworking. I am really friendly and I learn quickly. I am clean and dress appropriately. I think that I am very employable. I just want to job where I don't have to wear a turtleneck and long sleeves, seeing as it is like eighty degrees here in October. I want a job where I can be me, even where my looks are concerned. I don't feel like I am asking too much.

I don't want to wear skimpy clothes. I just don't want to constantly be covering up all of my tattoos.  I hate that I can't do what I want to do with my hair, because of some stupid notion society has about what's acceptable. I look darn good with blue in my hair. I want to let my light shine. I don't feel like it's too much to ask. There has to be somewhere that I can get a job and still look the way I want to look.

I feel like everyone has a different light. Everyone has a different look. I really wish that I lived in a world where everyone was able to let their light shine through the way that they want. Purple hair, a mohawk, head to toe tattoos, piercings galore, a mu-mu, head coverings in public, all black, pastels only, bald, bearded, dread-locked- I don't care. It's all pretty as long as the wearer feels pretty. I think the important thing is to do what makes you feel like you light shines.

In my opinion, it is incredibly unfortunate that I feel like I can't let my light shine because I won't be able to get a job. Or I can choose to let it shine, and remain unemployed until I can find an accepting employer. We are all so beautiful and so different, we humans, it's a pity that we are so often compelled to conform.

My little Oyster.

Last night as I was dealing with my usual bout of insomnia, I was thinking about something that I have experienced multiple times recently. This leads me to a post that is going to have two parts, the first is going to be about choosing your words carefully.

Recently, a couple of different people have said to me that my younger son, Puff, must have gotten all of the personality between he and Archer. That sentence in itself is incredibly hurtful to me and would have been incredibly hurtful to Archer had he been the one to hear it. There are many other ways to describe my boys. Puff is definitely the more boisterous of the two. However, being outgoing doesn't necessarily mean that he has all of the personality. I won't pretend that I have never put my foot in my mouth before. I have done it many times and I probably do it at least once a day. However, when referring to someone's children or addressing their parenting tactics or home life it would always be prudent to choose your words carefully. Hurting my feelings regarding Archer is one thing, but had he heard these statements and been hurt himself it would have been a whole different issue.

Now on to the good stuff. The part about my little oyster. Puff is definitely more of an intense personality than Archer is. However, anybody who thinks Archer doesn't have much personality is sadly mistaken. In fact, that mistake says more about you than it does about Archer. What it says is that you haven't been let in by him, and that's probably with good reason. Archer only opens up to the coolest of the cool. He only becomes attached to people who truly deserve his love and attention. And when he opens up, you will find the most amazing pearl in the whole world. If Puff lets you in, it means that you smiled at him or, simply, that you are in the room. However, Archer is more selective regarding the people that he opens up to.

As far as personality goes, Archer loves to snuggle. He loves to play in the dirt and he enjoys collecting bugs. He knows lots of different bugs by name and he also knows their habits. He is well-versed in animals and sea-creatures. We have tried to put him in several different sports, but he would rather play the piano. He likes to talk to adults and tell them stories about Transformers and Thomas the Train. He prefers situations where adults talk to him one on one. He has excellent taste in movies and he loves zombies. He would be an amazing sidekick to have when the zombie apocalypse rolls into town. He is extremely perceptive and really witty. He is much like his dad in that he will suddenly use a big word and surprise you because you never imagined he would know the meaning of that word.

Archer loves people. He remembers people that he hasn't seen in years. He takes his attachments very seriously. He takes his friendships and relationships seriously. Archer doesn't like to kill bugs, he would rather set them free. He likes to give hugs. He likes pink and he also likes princesses. He has no concept that certain things are for boys and certain things are for girls, and I intend to keep it that way for as long as possible. He believes in magic and he lives in a world where superheroes are real. If we pass a red and black car, he generally assumes that it is Bumblebee and he is on an important mission.

Archer is not typical as far as boys his age go. However, to assume he has less personality than his brother is a gross underestimation. And, I say again, it really says more about you than it does about him. If you are reading this, and you know the Archer that I described, you should feel an incredible amount of pride. If that little oyster let you into his life, than you must be pretty special too. If not, you should take the time to talk to him. Your life will be better because of it. Mine is.

A Journey.

I know that I talk a lot about running, but that is because I love running. Running saved my life. Running picked me up out of a crippling depression that had been going on for years. Running lost me 60 pounds, which is great on its own but it also did wonders for the self-loathing I had been feeling for years. But most of all, running made me believe in God again.

I have been on a spiritual roller coaster for most of my life. I was raised Catholic, and my Catholic family didn't exactly make the religion appealing. My upbringing made me very leery of religion. It made me loathe spirituality and question God. It raised questions that have lasted until the present. I don't really have a lot of good things to say about Catholicism, but I won't go any further with it because I don't want to offend anyone. Suffice to say, I am not Catholic anymore and being Catholic wasn't a positive thing for me.

I have, at times, decided to try to find my way to God but I never have managed to. I dabbled in churches and never lasted long. But for the past year and a half, I have been growing closer to God without a church. It has been made abundantly clear to me that he exists and most of that has come to me through running.

It happens in various ways. Sometimes, I run outside and bear witness to beautiful things that point to God. Sometimes, I run and my thoughts wander and then become clear in a way that I can't really describe. Sometimes, it hurts so bad that I can't wait for it to be over but when I am done I feel like I conquered the world. Other times, I spend and entire run feeling grateful for my feet pounding the pavement and the breath in my lungs. All of it has inspired a level of gratitude within me that leads me to a level of faith that I have never experienced before.

For the first 25 years of my life, I had no desire to run. When I was young and hadn't baked and birthed babies, I didn't really need exercise to be in shape. After I became a mom, and when I started struggling with my weight, I tried all different sorts of exercise and nothing ever really stuck. I couldn't get into it. Then, suddenly, when I was at my heaviest and when I was at my most miserable I decided to buckle down and I started to run.

What followed can only be credited to God. I pushed through when I hated it, and I am not known for my perseverance. I started to lose weight, I started to love running. Here I sit nearly two years later, and running is the only thing in my life that I am 100% certain of. If I gain weight, I will still run. I look forward to it every day. I feel things and know things when I run that I don't feel or know at any other point during the day.

In my mind, it is like this perfect circle. When I needed running, God brought me to it.  I don't think that I just needed it physically, I think that God knew that running would bring me to him as well. God brought me running and running brings me to God every day.

I am writing this with a smile on my face and hope in my heart. I am enjoying the path that I am on and I am enjoying the journey that I am taking. I can say, with certainty, that I did not like my life nearly as much when God and running were not part of it. 

Wow....8 months later.

I can't believe that it has been eight months since the last time I blogged. I think that I have gotten very caught up in the business of life. I forgot that blogging can be cathartic and that it does good things for my mental health. I would make this the type of post that updates everyone on how I have been and what I have been doing, but to be honest I haven't been doing that much. In short, I still run and I still love it. I still parent and sometimes I love it and sometimes I wish that I could run away screaming and start a single life in a city somewhere. My husband was deployed and now he is back, however my kids and I are now living in a different state waiting for his service to end. He should be joining us in a month and a half. I graduated from college and am getting ready to start graduate school. I will be pursuing an MA in teaching. I think that's about it, and it is definitely the interesting stuff.



I decided to blog again because here I am alone with my kids again. By the time that 2012 ends, my husband and I will have only lived together for 4 months of the year. While I understand that this is a part of the military package, that doesn't make it suck any less. My husband is amazing. We have a wonderful relationship and I love him very much. On top of that, he is a great father and he is very involved. He helps a lot around the house and does more parenting than many men that I know. It has been a really long year for me.



I don't think that a lot of people are completely honest with the public about their feelings on parenthood. I know that, having been a stay-at-home-mom for the last five years, there is a lot of pressure in the stay-at-home-mom community to be all mommy all the time. You are looked down on or judged if you express an interest in a life outside of the home.A stay-at-home-mom is expected to enjoy every minute of it and to devote herself to it entirely. I know some moms who actually do, I know some moms who are honest about the moments that they don't. However, most of the moms I know just put something out there that I *personally* don't think they really feel.



We moms don't talk about how exasperating it is to try and keep a house clean all day long while the messes seem to keep popping up. No one understands how hard it is knowing that the words "go brush your teeth" are going to cause a tantrum but they have to be said anyways. No one especially understands the crushing feeling of having a million things to do, wanting to do them all right, and feeling like you will never get the five minutes you want to just sit there and breathe. I have felt that a lot this year. Being a stay-at-home-mom is defeating me. I am not giving my all to anything because I feel like it's never enough.



I am so tired all the time that I feel like having a job of my own would actually be refreshing. I feel like I would value my time with my children more if I worked outside of the home. I want to enjoy them, not wish that they would go play quietly away from me in their rooms. I want to look forward to the moments that I will share with them rather than dreading the moment that nap ends and I have to deal with more messes. On the weekends (or whatever my days off are) I would like to look forward to doing things with them rather than wishing for a moment of peace and quiet.



I love my kids so much. I love being a mom. I love being a wife. But I think that I need to get back in touch with Molly as a person. For a long time, school was all I needed to keep me anchored as a person. Then I added running and that worked like a charm. But, once again, I need to grow and I need to change. I need to work. I need to start making a life for myself outside of my home. I need to see myself as something other than a wife and mom and student and runner, because I have always known that I was capable of great things and I need to feel like I am doing them.



It's time for me to walk out the front door and grow even more than I already have in the last couple of years.

Celebrating My Babyman.

The child whose birth I am celebrating today is my miracle. Any mother of more than one child will tell you that you don't have favorites, but you do love each child differently. Your love grows and changes and your relationships with each child are different and special. My little Puff is my miracle. He is the baby that I have truly gotten to embrace and enjoy. He is the baby that brought me out of almost three years worth of depression and anxiety and into the light.

My sweet Babyman is my breath of fresh air. He is the smiling, mischievous, little chunk that I look forward to seeing every single day. I remember that one year ago, I was amazed by his beauty, but slightly disappointed that he had brown eyes. Now, I enjoy the sparkle of mischief he has in those dark brown beauties. I love the way that he reaches for me and says, "buh, buh, buh." I love his independent streak and I love how excited he gets to play and how efficiently he entertains himself.

The last year has been amazing because I feel like my sweet boy has helped me to come into my own as a mother. I am a better mother because of the sweet little boy who is one year old today. I can't wait to see him spend the next year developing his own personality and his own set of quirks. I love my sweet baby and I can't wait to watch him turn into my terrible toddler.

Happy birthday, Babyman.

Half-Marathon.

Last year, on March first, I started the Couch to 5k running program. I was about six weeks postpartum after having my sweet little Puff. I had been overweight since 2008, after I gave birth to my older son. I had always made really half-hearted attempts to lose weight after he was born, but I think that my depression really inhibited me and kept me from fully committing. However, last year something really clicked. I was fed up with the way my life was and I was incredibly tired of hating myself. I started that program and I also started Weight Watchers and I never looked back.

This hasn't been an easy road for me. I wasn't raised to eat well and exercise and I don't have the best habits. However, here I stand almost a year later, sixty pounds lighter and roughly eight sizes more trim. Weight loss has been wonderful. I can't even begin to explain the improvement in how I feel. But, there has been one other major gain from this life experience. It took me twenty-five years to figure it out, but, I am a runner.

I absolutely love to run. Nothing makes me feel stronger than running through the compulsion to stop. Nothing makes me feel more at peace than a good run. Running is a huge part of my connection with the world around me and the God that I am learning to believe in. I never knew I had it in me, and now it is something that I never want to lose.

After a couple of months of Couch to 5k, I entered my first 5k and I ran every step. I average 13:30 per mile, but I ran the entire time. Shortly after that, I registered for a couple more 5k races and my performance improved each time. Then, a friend and I trained to run a 10k. We did not end up competing, but running with her was one of the best things to have happened to me in 2011 and I increased my distance markedly. Then, it occurred to me that I wanted to challenge myself in a way that I never thought possible. I registered for a half-marathon. 13.1 miles of running and I was ready to dive in.

I trained hard, however I have been sick on and off recently and my husband leaving for deployment really hindered my ability to train as well as I would have liked. But I still trained and even though I was a couple of miles short in my training, I showed up for the race last Saturday, January 14, 2012. I was reluctant and I knew that my inadequate training was going to affect my performance. However, I still wanted to do it and I knew that I was able to run the majority of the distance.

It was a very cold, rainy Saturday with a prediction of rain. I don't own winter running gear, so I knew it was bound to be interesting. In fact, less than a foot off of the starting line and I ran right through a huge puddle. My feet were cold, my hands were freezing and I realized almost right away that I should have gone to the bathroom before I started. I kept running. The course was gorgeous and I kept reflecting on how I was doing something that I never imagined that I could do.

My mind would occasionally drift to my full bladder and my frozen, wet toes but I would remind myself to think about what I was looking at and I would take a moment to give thanks every time that happened. The things I generally thought of to give thanks for were my kids, my husband, my feet and legs that were allowing me to run, my friends who had supported me, and the finish line. Every single time my mind would drift, I went to what I was grateful for and it helped.

I finally came to a porta-potty at about five and a half miles. I lost about five minutes waiting in the line, but I kept jogging in place. Then, I took off again and that is when the magic happened. I had to run through a residential area and coming out of it there was a small downhill slope. The small hill gave a view of a lake and across the lake there was a beautiful mountain home. The scenery was glorious and I know that slowed down significantly as I came down that hill because I was so taken aback. Then, as I was staring in awe, two gigantic bald eagles (my favorite Washington feature) swooped down and tried to catch something in the lake. It was the most beautiful thing that I had ever seen in my life.

I realized, at that moment, that I was blessed. I was a formerly obese woman, running in a half-marathon, with a deployed husband who was lucky beyond measure just to be there. If I had ever doubted that there was a higher power, those doubts were squashed. I took a deep breath, said a small prayer, and kept running. My GPS yelled in my ear a moment later and informed me that my average pace was still roughly a twelve minute mile. I was in mile eight of a half-marathon and I was hitting twelve minute miles. I kept on at that pace for another two or so miles.

It was then that my run went all to crap. I came through the out and back and I was starting to hurt and feel tired. My feet were so cold and wet that I was actually having some pain in my toes, and then I got lost. I ran about a quarter mile out of my way, up a hill before I ran into a runner who told me that I was going the wrong way. I ran with her to the fork where she went up to go to the out and back and I ran down to head toward the finish line. That mistake cost me about half a mile total and it happened right at the point when my run was getting difficult. I averaged fourteen minute miles the last mile and a half or two miles of my run. My spirits were low and I was just so freaking cold that the whole thing had started to seem absurd.

I was fantasizing about calling my friends to just come and get me, but I really wanted the medal I would get for finishing. I kept running, it was just an insanely slow pace and with an incredibly bad attitude. I was about half a mile away from the finish line when my GPS told me that I had completed 13.1 miles (because I got lost) and that my time was 2:56:??, I jogged a little bit farther before I decided that walking up to the college (where the race ended) would give me a cool down and that I had met my goal and done it not too terribly much over my goal. I walked in, until I saw my friends and they started yelling me to run across the finish. I ran across the finish line, collected my medal, and immediately went into some sort of hypothermia-related shock.

I have never felt so immediately sore after a run. First of all, I needed to get my socks off. My feet were ridiculously cold and wet and I was getting concerned that I might lose a digit. I also needed to stretch and eat and replace my electrolytes. I was shaking and my inner thighs were already seizing up. I did what any, rational girl would do. I went and got a cheeseburger and some hot cocoa with my friends. I also let my friend drive home and kept my feet under an eighty-degree heater the entire way.

It took a while to sink in, but in the past couple of days I have realized the magnitude of my achievement. Not only did I run 13.1 miles, I did it in the freezing cold without good gear. I ran 13.1 miles. I, Molly, ran the entire race. I worked through my mental and physical roadblocks. I ran 13.1 miles. I used to wheeze when I walked up my stairs, and I ran 13.1 miles. I ran 13.1 miles and managed to feel thankful and lucky to be doing it. I am still in total awe of what I accomplished.

The Like Book.

I think that anyone who has ever parented a toddler should know that toddlerhood is like a minefield. Toddlers are...special. Toddlers will eat you up, spit you out, and then come back for seconds. They kick, scream, bite, pinch, don't eat, don't stop eating, refuse to bathe, won't brush their teeth, won't take a bath, and are all around difficult.

I just so happen to be lucky enough to be parenting a child who inherited my stubborn personality. He is, without a doubt, the person who gets under my skin the most in the whole world. Maybe he and my mother are neck and neck, but for the most part my relationship with him is the most difficult thing in my life.

I feel like we are constantly at odds. He is actually stubborn enough to bend my will from time to time, and I am extremely stubborn. I go whole days where I feel bad at the end of the day because I realize that all I have done is yell at him or send him to time out. There are whole weeks where I realize that I have had almost entirely negative interaction with my son. I feel like I will try to do fun, good things with him and it will blow up in my face because it ends in a tantrum.

I love my son. He's funny and smart. He's very people oriented. He loves people and he always wants to make his friends happy. If another kid comes to our home, he offers them a juice box and a go-gurt. He remembers people that we haven't seen in over a year. He loves to read and he tells really good stories. I am pretty sure that he actually thinks he is a superhero and his blue/grey eyes shine when he smiles. He looks exactly like his daddy would look if he had my nose. He's one of the most amazing things I have ever seen in my life. But when he's screaming at me because he wants Goldfish crackers for breakfast instead of waffles, all of that gets lost.

It's like the moment he starts yelling and whining, I tune him out and go into defensive mode. It's not fun on the best of days. It's even less fun when I have no one to relieve me and no break from him at all. He goes to preschool and some days I can't wait to drop him off and I dread picking him up. I don't like feeling that way about my child.

I knew coming into deployment that I was going to have to tackle our relationship head on. I knew that I was going to have to dip into my creative reserves and I was going to have to pour out every last drop of patience and empathy. I was right. We are only a month into this thing, and some days I just don't even know how the rest of the time is going to be possible. Some days, he gets away with murder just because I am so exhausted from fighting with him.

The last couple of days have been better. Today was Day 5 of he and I filling out our "I Like Book." I saw the book on a website that I frequent that offers good deals on baby and children's items and I decided that it was worth a try. I figured that it definitely wouldn't make things worse. The book arrived and I decided that I would start after the New Year so that I could look through it first.

The idea is simple. There are two slots for every day and you write the name of the person who is writing the "like" and then you write a "like." The two slots are there so that both the mother and the father can write something, but since this is my project and my husband is gone I have been having my son tell me one thing that he likes about me. There are extra spaces from time to time in the book for sketching or doing small activities.

Tonight, I told my son that I like when he helps me feed the dog. His contribution was that he likes my smile. My heart melted. I actually shed a tear. For one thing, this activity is so simple that he actually understands what is expected of him and is eager to participate. My son, who I had just had to pull out of the bathtub for dumping water out, likes my smile. My smile brightens his day. He knows how he can brighten my day now.

In only five days, I am seeing a little bit of change in the way he behaves toward me and in my attitude toward him. I look forward to the two minutes we spend "liking" each other at the end of the day. This book could be one of the best investments I have ever made.

I leave you with an oldie, but a goody.

Runtelldat.

I have been sick non-stop since Dave left. I have had a combination of sniffles, nasty cold, flu-like symptoms, vomiting, etc. You name it, I have dealt with it. I have never had the world's best immune system. Apparently the stress of Dave being gone, the holidays, school, running, parenting, and every thing else that comes in life has been enough to make my immune system totally crash.

I have never been the world's best sick person. I am a huge baby. I can't function with a cloudy brain and I have a tendency to just want to hibernate when I get sick. Being sick without my partner around is impossible. I already knew that Dave did a lot around here. I have never taken his contributions for granted but I am used to having help. I am used to being able to hand everything off at some point during the day. Not having that, and vomiting, has been trying.

The worst part of all of it is that I feel like I am being a sub-par mother. I never want my kids to feel like they aren't at the top of my list. I always felt that way growing up and I never wanted it for my own children. But I imagine that kids who see their mom half-dead on the couch all day feel pretty second-seat. The only difference for me is that I was sick whereas my mom was an alcoholic.

Parenting is the hardest thing I have ever done. Every day I meet a challenge that I don't feel ready for. Every single day I have to make difficult decisions. Each and every day, I have to meet someone's needs and do it well. I never imagined how difficult it would be on a normal day. Now that I have had to parent without my husband and while sick, I feel like I probably haven't even imagined the worst of it. I cannot even begin to imagine doing this if there wasn't an end in sight.

My hat is off to all of the spouses who do twelve month deployments and more. My hat is off to the single parents. My hat is off to those of you who have spouses that don't do a whole lot when they come home from work. I can't wait for the end of this, but at least I have an end. You don't, and you deserve one. If you ever need a break, you know who to call. I feel morally obligated to baby sit for each and every one of you.