30 Days of Thankfulness: Day Twenty-nine

Can I just say that I am ridiculously excited for December??  Of course you have seen my tree.  Alyssa last night decided the tree was "missing something" and hung one pink bracelet on it to make the "Christmas tree all done!"  So we have our tree up, decorated (well, to the extent that it will be this year anyways), and now we are just waiting for the right month...

Right month??  Yes...While some are okay with going nuts for the Christmas season moments after putting the turkey leftovers in the fridge, my husband curbed my Polar Express excitement by requesting that I at least put the movies on hold until December actually arrives.  (Guess what we are watching this Saturday??)

So in my childish amounts of excitement and impatience, I am thankful that Saturday movie night is only a couple more nights away!!  Now...if only I had a cd player and my Christmas music this year.

How I Feel...

I don't think I have ever heard a song that describes the utterly strange feeling that settles over me during deployment.  People have tried to describe it to me/for me as sad, angry, depressed, lonely, stressed, tough, etc.  Yes, at times these all pass through my life while my soldier is away....But really, those go through everyone's lives on any given day...it just isn't an adequate description of the overwhelming and ever persistent presence of this feeling.  Thank you to Simple Plan and Natasha Bedingfield for your song "Jet Lag" and a new way to tell people what this feeling is.

"You say good morning
When it's midnight
Going out of my head
Alone in this bed
I wake up to your sunset
And it's driving me mad
I miss you so bad
And my heart, heart, heart is so jet lagged
Heart, heart, heart is so jet lagged
Heart, heart, heart is so jet lagged."

~Link to the rest of the lyrics~

I am simply Jet Lagged.  Our lives right now are so very far apart that we have settled into different routines to get ourselves through each day but never forget that the other is likely sleeping or awake at a different time as us and they aren't here.  This knowledge, this life is tiring and hard to adjust to, no matter how many times you do it.  My mom sent me a Facebook link to this song and obviously I cried.  But I felt a sense of calm from it too.  Someone gets it!  Someone out there knew how to put this feeling into words...They may not even have been referring to a military relationship but it fits so perfectly and I simply had to share this new-found description with everyone.

So for all you couples whose hearts are so "jet lagged", let's all look forward to homecoming whether it is five days away or a year.