WHAT THE WHAT??

Joe has been back for a little over two weeks, and the time has flown by. Preparing for and having Christmas then a brief visit from Jeff and Janiece and then New Year's. I have been working occasionally as I did today, but we've soaked up a lot of home time (and running around time) together as well. Tomorrow is the last day before we both go back to work and life is "normal" again. In many ways I want it to be normal again just for the sake of having such, but in others I don't. We're about a month away from 3-4 months of Joe being gone for very extensive training, followed by another deployment, and so on. It's the life I've heard it would be and now we're living it. Holy hell. The irony is that we're becoming much more secure in other ways - I'm one payment away from my student loans dipping into the teens; Joe and I are really good minus some negative comments about the Eagles this evening and a little too much Seth McFarlane; we have a decent rental with good credit hx for buying once the market is more secure and we don't live in GA; we now have two dogs which is balancing life out pretty well - minus the fact that when I re-read the lease yesterday it said we could only have one dog; and despite this shitty economy, we're both of course employed. With all that, we've been talking (amidst cold sweats and nervous stomachs) about when to have our first child. Bad or good, we've narrowed it down to sooner than later so at least one kid is paid for by the Army. I mean that's not unhealthy decision-making, right? Ha. The hardest part is figuring out when the hell Joe's schedule allows (HA) for a kid to be born and to iron out what parts of the pregnancy and the early parts of the kid's life that Joe will miss. Of course, when it happens it happens and no amount of scheduling will matter, I hear, and shit, that's assuming I can even get pregnant. Who knows. In the meantime, we'll continue to work on our financial fitness in preparation for life in general. Woot.

So things are good. Joe is in the bathroom and has been for some time now. I'm on the couch blogging with both the pups who are crashed. I have several choices of books to read thanks to Walden Books going out of business here, and I'm all ready for bed minus brushing my teeth. Yeah, life really is good.

After writing everything I have, I feel a lot better than when I started. I think it's easy for a lot of 20 somethings to compare themselves to others as we're all starting out. I hate to admit it, but I know I do. I was having issues earlier this evening with folks younger than me having everything fall into place - I mean, the fairytale bullshit stuff. The cynic in me doesn't understand how it's possible. You gotta put in the time to get to the good stuff, right? No? How does that happen? Things just fall into place?! That is not life how I know it. But regardless, I guess what has to happen is for me to focus on my own "good stuff" because it's here, and if I keep worrying about what other people have, I'm going to miss out on what's happening in front of me. With that, Joe just got out of the bathroom, and we are going to go lay in bed together and read. Now THAT is good stuff!