Tonight's post brought to you by Tylenol PM

The six-month mark of the deployment. It's finally here. I'm halfway done. With this anniversary comes an entire new hand of emotions that I'm ill-equipped to deal with. One minute I'm thrilled, because this means that I have managed to make it through six months of single-momming it again a.) without burning down the house, b.) I've managed to keep my husband's truck running (we'll just not talk about the required jump-start at one point due to my complete lack of attention to it) and c.) everyone in my immediate vicinity is still alive. This is truly a miracle and leads us to discussion of our next emotion, the blind paranoia/irritation/rage at nearly everyone around me. Sometimes it's deserved (repeated passive-aggressive Facebook friend requests from my sister's ex's new wife aren't going to just earn a "reject request" from me, I'm going to openly make fun of her for being a psycho) but I suppose that I *can* admit to myself that everyone driving near the Gilbert area last Thursday probably didn't deserve to be flipped off. Except that guy that was actually driving the SPEED LIMIT in front of me on a one-lane road when I obviously need to get to Target right away. He was asking for it.

Chad is coming home for a few weeks, hopefully soon, so it finally gives me something to look forward to. This also means that he'll leave AGAIN and I won't see him for months again after that, but I'm trying not to dwell too much on that at this point. One mountain at a time!

I've also finally lowered my hours at work and that has helped decrease my bouts of crazy to about two shows a week. It's been a nice change. Emma's been able to stay with me more so that we don't have to deal with too much handing off to someone else while I'm working. She's been having some issues with not wanting to do homework, which is odd for my little bookworm/straight A girl. I've talked to her teacher, who assures me that fourth-grade girls tend to start being moody in preparation for the teen years, so I'm chalking up the homework issue to this and the stress of the deployment. I'm trying not to be too hard on her, since she still has all A's and only one B (in homework), is DIVIDING FRACTIONS IN FOURTH GRADE and just expressed an interest in reading To Kill a Mockingbird (uhhhhh, maybe not yet, dear) but I know I put too much pressure on her to be perfect. Sometimes I have to remind myself to breathe and just remember that she's a kid! I was still making cushion forts and playing with My Little Ponies at that age. And I turned out.....ok, not a valid argument. But she really is a great kid. I need to not take all my stress out on her, my poor only child.

I guess what I'm trying to say with this whole thing is that I'm feeling unstable and to everyone around me: I'm sorry.

Unless you're a slow driver.

And with the end of that rambling post I'm going to bed. Have to gear up for tomorrow's start of my *gasp* whole two days of work in a row for this week!