Home Again

Wes is finally home again. It’s been such a crazy ride. I really wish I would’ve documented more of it while he was gone. I definitely was forced to find something inside myself that I didn’t think was there – the ability to live, to survive, to carry on completely on my own. I have always been extremely dependent on him. I went from my mother’s house to moving in with him the day of my 18th birthday, and we’ve never been separated since. It was character building, to know that I did it. Don’t get me wrong – it sucked so badly in so many ways. But eventually I fell into the habit of it, and it just WAS. I think it was an important lesson to learn. Because honestly there have been times when things were so bad between us that one of the only things keeping me here was I honestly didn’t believe that I was capable of doing anything else. Not that I’m saying I wish I would’ve left, but I don’t ever want to be my like own mother. She and my dad got married and had me when she was 15. And she spent the next 15 years of her life married to a man I’m pretty sure she hated, simply because she’d always been with him, never been on her own and didn’t believe that she could. I need to be here because I love my husband, because I love my family, and because I made a commitment that I believe in – not because I don’t think I’m strong enough to do anything else. 

But on the flip side, so much stress is lifted off of me now, just by the fact that he’s home again. He didn’t get much of a break – he came home from the hotel Friday night. Saturday we went to Kings Dominion (we bought season passes with the awesome amount of money he made while at the nuke). Sunday we didn’t do much, but it was great just to have him home. Monday we went to Kings Dominion AGAIN, and while we were there, he got a call to show up for work on Tuesday. 🙁 We were hoping to at least get a week together. 

The job is…eh. I don’t feel like I have room to complain, because there are good things about it. One, that he has a job, period, when so many people don’t right now. Two, it’s a maintenence contract, which usually means long-term. The guy running it showed up 9 months ago for what he thought was going to be a 3 day job. Yeah. There aren’t many long-term jobs in his line of work – the good jobs are usually a month or so, max. So this is a kind of job security we’re not really used to. But on the negative side, it’s an hour away. It’s only 40 hours, AND it probably means he will miss out on a shorter but much better job starting next week that’s only 30 minutes away AND involves lots of overtime. Most of the money he makes is overtime – a 40 hour check isn’t the best. Don’t get me wrong, it’s good. But the other job would’ve been so much better. But oh well. I’m just glad to have him in my bed again every night. <3

School’s going well for me. Although I feel like I’m struggling, I had this great reminder yesterday of how smart I am. I admit it – I was the goody-goody in school and since it was pretty much the only thing I ever felt *good* at, the only thing that gave me the least little bit of confidence, I reveled in it. Anyway, we were playing a vocabulary game yesterday in class and the girl who got put against me was all like "I don’t wanna be against Tiffani!" and tried to get someone to switch with her, but no one would. lol So then after I answered all the questions right (and quicker than she did), we finally came to one I didn’t know. And someone in the class made the joke that since I didn’t know it, we must not have learned it and it was an unfair question. It’s stupid, but that just…made my day. I remember when people used to say that exact same thing sometimes in school, and it’s one of the few fond memories I have of that institution (although honestly most of them were probably not meant as the compliment I took them as). I also cracked everyone up because I couldn’t remember the sign for Christmas, so I signed "Jesus birthday" instead. 🙂 I’ve made a few aquantainces in my class, which is more than I can say for the combind years I’ve taken college classes. I usually just don’t associate with anyone, but then again language classes have a way of making you do so that classes like history and such that are mostly lecture based don’t.

Anyway, it’s 12:30 and I really should be heading to bed where everyone else in the house already is. lol