I miss the craziness of having three kids with ten places to go on the weekends. Here, I have nothing but time which is okay if I have money and can do something. I hate feeling sorry for myself, especially when this is just a natural part of a decision I made. Even good decisions have moments that leave you wondering. Anyway, I just read an amazing story about a dog in Iowa and thought I'd share. Animals are resilient. People are too if we allow ourselves to be.
I wander into this space of mine to trumpet the wondrous joys of being where I am but I don't discuss the difficulties. There are many of those and some days it's so annoying I want to scream. Like this evening... I just want to talk to my kid. Not having instant access to him is the hardest thing ever. I can't just wander into his room and talk to him. I'm at the mercy of everyone's schedule in Iowa and can do nothing but sit and wait for someone to get my freakin text messages and have him call me. It makes me sad and it makes me cry and it PISSES ME OFF!!! It makes me want to get into my car, drive the 620 miles and grab ahold of him and never let go.
I had a similar discussion with his dad not long ago. He told me that it was like that for him when C. lived with me and he saw him on weekends. Sure, if you subtract 600 miles from the distance and top it off with the fact that he got a weekly phone call and someone got back to him within minutes, not hours. Just sitting here not knowing if my baby is okay is torture. I will never be convinced that the paternal connection to a child is as strong as the maternal. No way.
Anyway, Ben and Em are the other difficult part of this equation. I wasn't home for Em's 14th birthday. First birthday I've missed since her 6th I believe. I did make sure she scored a purple ipod nano with a birthday inscription but still... I wish I'd have been there. Ben is reading a whole lot better this year and I wish I could do the weekly reading night at our house with him.
Yes, I miss the rest of the family and those stupid dogs but I miss the kids the most. We did so much together and they filled up every second of my time away from work. Now weekends pretty much suck. I just want to hug them all and get loud and crazy like we used to.
I still love the job and the people here though. I would step outside to the flight line and look at my jets and take a deep breath and remember why I'm here but just as soon as I did that, I'd miss the kids phone call I bet. GRRR!
The theme of today is 14. Emily turned 14 years old (and got her driving permit!!) and Eva is 14 wks pregnant today. CrAzY!!!!
So my hours of work as a precinct captain and my donations and my phone calls and so on (as well as the work of thousands of others like me) have paid off and we are now on the path of change. For two years I've expected this to happen and I had hoped to celebrate with friends and cry joyous tears. None of that happened as Texas is still red as red can be and it still stands true that Republicans are people and people can be cruel. I did cry last night but not happy tears. Anyway, I am excited about the direction our country will go now and I hope that by January, this hate and venom will die off and we will begin to work together to rebuild our great country. This comment from a CNN article sums it up better than I can.
I want to point out one thing:
Barack Obama has declared that there is not Red America, or a Blue America, but rather a United States of America. Last night he spoke to the supporters of John McCain, saying, "I need you help", and that "I will be your President too". Now, if you're a conservative, you can choose to be cynical and believe that this is nothing more than political rhetoric- but you'd better hope that it's not, because if it is, then we're all screwed for another four years. You can also be selfish- we can all be selfish, we can all cling to our sense of exclusive identity and go on hating each other until the entire country falls down around our ears. You can laugh at Obama's calls for unity because you're a small-town pro-lifer who thinks that he's godless and arrogant, and continue to hate all the "blue states", and I can respond by continuing to hate the "red states" and thinking of you as nothing more than a fat, lazy ignorant person. We can literally do this until the country dies. And it would be the dumbest, most selfish thing to do ever.
We have issues in this country, and this is the time to focus on them. Barack Obama is not a Muslim (though it wouldn't matter is he was), he is not a terrorist, he is not a communist. I like him because he transcends the Cold War- he's said the things that nobody else has had the courage to say because we like to break things into "Communist" and "Democratic"- a totally false and outdated distinction. Obama believes that government should find where it can do the most good to help its citizens and the world, do what it can there, and back off where it's less effective. In that sense he's very pragmatic- and pragmatism is what we need. We need a realistic solution to Iraq, a realistic solution to the energy crisis, a realistic solution to health care and global warming and a realistic way to improve education across the board. We need to work together to do it. So please, everybody, the Republicans are not Nazis and the Democrats are not communists- it's incredibly obvious if you just take 3 minutes to use your brain instead of just making up hateful things about people who aren't just like you.
Thank you sooo much to my Republican friends who took the high road and called or emailed or texted to offer your congratulations last night. I love you. You give me faith that we can get on the same page or at least in the same chapter of the book and write a nice ending to the story of our generation.
First off, for my pal Pat who asked about an RSS feed. I guess the answer is yes... http://justlisa.com/index.xml. I've never used an RSS feed service so it never occurs to me to go out of the way to implement it here. Lame, huh?
On the job front, I've moved to night shift officially and still love it. People are a little grumpier as the day wears on but still much better than what I was used to. I have to say how much I love Italians. Their personalities, the accent, the language, their names and the way they say "Ciao!" Earlier at work I heard a couple speaking Italian outside my door. Such a beautiful language really. All I could understand was the occasional "sortie" (what a civilian would call a flight) and at the end, one of them said "What the frig??" in heavily accented English. Cracked me up.
As long as I keep busy and stay with friends or coworkers, I am damn happy to be here but when I am alone, I get incredibly homesick for the kids. I usually cry in the shower every day thinking of what I am missing by being so far away. I still feel this was the right decision for me though. Crying in the shower for 20 minutes a day beats the hell out of crying 5 hours or more every single day.
I went home for a weekend a couple of weekends ago and am going to be able to do that once every 4 to 6 weeks so it's not like I'm military and deployed away from my family for a year or more. So many people here talk of being gone weeks or months at a time without the ability to hop in the car and go home for a day or two. While I still hate the wars and fighting, I've gained a whole new level of appreciation for our military. The ability to leave it all behind in the name of a patriotic duty is pretty amazing.
On the night shift I am lucky enough to experience both Retreat at day's end and Taps at night. For some history, read this. Outside my building they fly the flags of the NATO countries who participate in training here. The other flags are taken down and put away shortly before Retreat then they lower our flag as the music plays. Very humbling. Taps has always caused a chill to go through me and it still happens every night. Big goosebumps!
Another great thing about Texas is early voting. As I voted today, I heard several proudly proclaim "I voted straight Republican!" Ahhh, life in the red state. I made sure to put my little blue dot in the sea of red.
