Photo Credit: QuoteFancy.com

It’s the last day of #NaBloPoMo and this will be my twentieth post of the month. I’m not going to lie: I didn’t think I’d post even half that many times! My success this month makes me hopeful I can continue writing with much more regularity…and even more hopeful that I can find interesting and worthwhile things to write about. That’s my biggest challenge. Much of what I write doesn’t feel all that interesting.

I digress.

The final prompt for this month is:
Have you chosen a word of the year for yourself for 2017? What is it? If not, what words would you consider?

Given that I really enjoy all the words, this is going to be a hard one to answer. Well, that’s not the real reason. The real reason is that this question has never been posed to me before. It’s never once crossed my mind to have a “word of the year.” Is that a thing people actually do?

So it’s making me think about all the things I’ve done and learned over the last eleven months. It all seems like a whilrwind. I’m not sure if I could nail down just one thing

Okay so scratch that.

Maybe the best word for 2017 is “anticipation.”

Yeah, that sounds about right. There’s a lot coming up for the next year. Things I’m excited and nervous about. Things that terrify me. Things that thrill me. Moving to another country. Leaving my family and my friends even further behind. Giving birth for the second time. A new baby. Deployments. Managing a toddler and an infant without my husband there for what I’m sure will feel like an eternity. Homecoming. Vacations. Disneyland in another country. Cross country road-tripping (I hate road trips, by the way. More than about 2 hours and I’m spent and start whining, toddler-style).

I spend a lot of time thinking about how all those things can turn out. I’m cautiously optimistic that everything will be Pinterest-worthy (especially that deployment homecoming…I’m a crazy person about things like that. I can offer about a 99% guarantee it will go down as I’m hoping it will). Hilariously, the only thing I don’t really have any reservations about is giving birth again. That’s right. Having my person basically ripped in half doesn’t freak me out, but a 30-hour road trip makes me want to crawl under the covers and cry.

I worry about how to manage to little girls under the age of 3 without a partner in crime to help deal with the crazy. I worry not because I don’t think I can do it, but because it’s just going to be so different from what I currently know. There will be no tag-teaming night time wake ups. I’m going to be more tired and more sleep deprived than I can even conceive of at this point. But I’m also hopeful that my oldest daughter will continue to be her (mostly) dreamy, helpful little self and will most likely be the glue that holds Mommy together until Daddy gets home. It’s a big responsibility for a two-year-old…but she is one hell of a kid and is stronger than I in so many ways.

I’ve been learning this year how to release myself from the grip of fear. It doesn’t benefit me in any way to live in fear or disappointment. Yes, things still frighten and disappoint me, but I try not to let myself stay there. I will fail. Things will fall apart. Plans will not go according to my schedule. That’s just the way life works. But I’m finding (as I have been for several years now) that finding the good or helpful in every situation. Or even finding the lesson. I often find myself asking, “What was I supposed to learn from this?”

So I think that’s my word for 2017: ANTICIPATION.

There’s a lot on the horizon…I’m looking forward to some incredible views.

Photo Credit: Someecards.com

Murphy’s Law had to have come about after a particularly rough bout of parenting. It’s the only way the last several hours of my life can make any sense. Just about anything that could have possibly gone wrong, did. And it all started around one o’clock in the morning on Sunday before finally relenting about an hour ago. It’s too exhausting to go into, but here’s the basic rundown:

*Godzilla wakes up from 1am until about 4am, during which time she pile drives and “cuddles” her daddy and me, so
*Husband and I really only got about five hours of sleep.
*What should have been a five hour drive home from Thanksgiving adventures turned in a 7.5 hours drive. Thanks, DC Beltway.
*I caught a nasty cold sometime on Saturday morning, but
*I’m pregnant, so taking an cold medicine worth a damn is a no-no
*Husband had finals due over the weekend so he had to spend most of our visit with family working on essays and final papers (WTF, school? No break for Thanksgiving? Really?)
*Upon arriving home, Godzilla decided it would be awesome to not go to sleep and instead spend literally six solid hours screaming at the top of her lungs for reasons that are still unbeknownst to us. She didn’t fall asleep until about 1:30am.
*Which meant that Husband had to request an emergency extension to get his final paper turned in to his last class. We’re still waiting to hear if the professor is actually going to accept it.
*If not, it means he fails the class (barely. Seriously, he’ll fail by something like 2 percentage points or less. It’s a real kick to the junk) and we’ll have to repay the military for that class.
*And finally, my sciatic nerve on either side is killing me so walking has been quite a challenge today.
*Oh, and I never drank a single cup of coffee.

It was the worst of times. And I’m not the only one that had some kind of garbage Monday. Almost everyone I talked to today wanted a redo. And isn’t that how it always seems to go? I mean, sure misery loves compay blah blah blah, but why must all our days go completely to hell at the exact same time? It really just leaves a wake of upset people that can in no way care for each other except to say, “Everything sucks, I know.”

I’m lucky that I have a large group of supportive women that physically surround me right now. No less than three of them (I can only assume Monday had mercy on them; otherwise, they should be granted sainthood immediately) contacted me to offer coffee, lunch, medicine, more coffee, tea, chai, a listening ear…all the things that a girl could possibly want!

I guess all this ranting and brain dumping is meant to do is remind you (and me) that we’re never truly alone. Someone is probably always looking out for us, someone always has your back, someone is having the same garbage day you are. Which means that we have a pretty awesome responsibility to each other. If someone always has my back, I always need to have someone else’s. To me, that’s a key component of life: being there for each other. Carrying with us a sense of combined duty and understanding for at least one other person is maybe the smallest, easiest way to offer kindness in an otherwise brutal world.

Make the world less brutal. It’s the least we can do.