*yawn* I'm tired. I actually went for a run today around 7:00pm. It was still pretty warm out and usually I'd wuss out in that case, but rarely am I in the mood to run so I had to take advantage of my energy. I hate admitting that I feel better when I'm running fairly regularly, but it's true. Damn exercise. I wish Dairy Queen made me feel good and lose weight, but no. It's the sweaty, gross, soreness of running that does that. At least running makes the DQ-created hips go away a little. Honestly, is there anything better during the summer than Dairy Queen? Softserve, how I love thee. Let me count the ways.
I'm starting to compile a mental list of things I'm going to miss when I leave MN. I should probably start writing them down. I won't remember them all as I'm sitting at my computer in Hawaii. I'd really hate to overlook something. And I have a feeling I'll like having a list that I can pull out and peruse on those days where I'll be homesick. If I get really organized maybe I'll start taking photos of the things I'll miss and make it into an album instead of just a list. But let's be real, I'm great at coming up with crafty ideas but not so great at carrying them out.
I've been spending a lot of time with Megan, Paul and Lincoln lately. It makes me think about kids, and parenting. Especially my potential offspring and my potential parenting skills. I was talking to Zac tonight, thinking about being a single parent, but not. The typical military set-up where you're married, you technically have a partner in the parenting challenge, but really you're running the race alone. Especially if they're deployed for months on end. No e-mails, no webcam, no phone calls can make up for everything that's missed. And you're on your own. No one to help with the late night feedings. No one to take the fussy baby when you're just tired and need 10 minutes to walk away to regroup. No one to bounce ideas off of. No one to share the victories and defeats with. Oh, there might be a family member or friend there to help out some, but it's not the person who contributed the other half of the DNA.
Raising children is difficult under the best of circumstances. And as I sit here, it seems like the military is a less-than-ideal living situation to bring kids into. Single parent home, constantly moving each time they get used to a place, needing to readjust on the fly, no stability, no routine. I'm amazed that any military brats turn out 'normal' at all. There are parents that do admirably under those circumstances, but I'm not sure I am up to, or even want to be up to, the challenge of raising kids in that environment. I've wanted kids most of my life but I'm beginning to wonder if maybe that's not in the cards for me. Some of the reasons are completely selfish, (e.g. I don't want the burden of being a single parent) some of them are not (e.g. I think children should be able to have a stable home with two parents that are there to nurture and raise them).
One of the things I admire about Zac, that at the same time frustrates me sometimes, is that he really takes life as it comes. He doesn't do much looking forward. He doesn't worry about the "what if"s that are out there on the horizon. He's much more in the vein of "we'll cross that bridge when we come to it." I respect that, because often I get caught up in the panic of the "if"s and lose sight of the here and how. But sometimes lack of forethought is a bad thing. You need to look ahead, and think about possibilities. It's one of those things where I think he and I balance each other out well.
I'm not even sure what I'm trying to express here tonight. I'm just feeling a lot of weird emotions and not sure what to do with them. Right now I'm feeling okay about moving to Hawaii and living there, just not about the life I'm getting with the new address in the middle of the ocean. I'm feeling kind of pessimistic, which is irritating.
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