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It’s Harder Than it Looks

By rscuderi on February 29, 2012 in Life

This week, I’m doing a different kind of work than usual. I have a new partner and everything. This job is much harder in many ways, but much more rewarding…

Instead of checking email, I’m changing diapers ( how can one cute baby stink so much…)

Instead of grabbing a cup if coffee, I’m sharing cereal ( not much was actually eaten, most was for face painting.)

Instead of writing articles, I’m playing on the floor ( a bit harder to get up these days.)

Instead of doing research, I’m giving baths (made even more fun by peeing on grandma as we’re getting in the tub, so she has to take one too.)

Instead of sitting in front of the computer, we are walking and bouncing ( yeah, I feel like crying too sometimes.)

And instead of wasting time on Facebook and Twitter ( I mean working, yeah, that’s what I meant to say,) we are cuddling in the rocking chair.

I am exhausted, with a smile in my face. It’s been many years since I did this kind of work, but it’s all coming back to me now.

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There Are Skeletons in Every Military Wife’s Closet

By rscuderi on February 10, 2012 in Deployment, Life, Stress

In my experience, there comes a time in each military deployment or separation, and I would imagine in some civilian ones as well, when the specter of frustration and resentment rears its ugly head. It’s time to bring this skeleton out of the closet and expose it to the light of day.

This usually occurs mid-way through the separation. The beginning is too fraught with sadness and anger at the necessity of deployment and the end is overshadowed by excitement and anxiety of over the impending return. But the middle drags and drags and with the incessant challenges and demands of parenting and juggling home and family and marriage become a huge burden.

The last couple of weeks, I have been feeling the slow creep of resentment building. He has one thing to do while he is gone, just one. This time it’s training and sometimes, it’s working in a war zone. I am left to struggle and juggle with 20 balls in the air, and no break.

I know, I know, sometimes he is in a modicum of danger, though is never on the front lines. And he is always lonely and misses us. I didn’t say it was rational, just how I feel at times. Honestly, I would never trade places. Being away from my children and grandchild would be unbearable to me…But I would love just once to only have one thing, just one thing to do.

I a recent phone conversation, we were talking about our weekend plans. He is deciding what to do on his days off and how to fill the time. He made the mistake of asking what I planned to do on my days off….I very calmly, at least relatively calmly, reminded him that, I DON’T GET A DAY OFF!

I have a career, a home to maintain, and children to raise. There are not enough hours in the day. When I have days off from my “regular job,” there is cleaning, laundry, mom taxi, grocery shopping, pet care, and children monitoring and so on.

Ok. Done venting. I love my children and my husband and my home and my life, but just once I’d love to only have one thing on my plate in a day…

Probably I’d be bored…

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Warning: Rant! Insensitivity and Stupidity Cause Damage

By rscuderi on February 5, 2012 in Life

Pardon me while I get on my soap box for a minute. There is something terribly wrong with a society that labels anyone who looks a bit different as ugly, or abnormal. Whether it’s a cleft lip, Down’s syndrome or another type of condition, our cruel world dismisses them as “less than,” abnormal, or disfigured. It’s not just mean, it’s ignorant.

Even worse, are their abominable parents who are embarrassed. I am ashamed of those parents who have been given this precious gift and yet cannot appreciate it. How can you sequester your child or not take pictures because he or she looks different. Or even Photo Shop those pictures so as to hide that which makes you uncomfortable.

Society uses the label, “deformed,” I call them special. Who can look at this and tell me he is not beautiful?

I have taken more than a hundred photos in the last four months of my precious little grandson. And I am proud and eager to show them to anyone who will look. I share so many on Facebook that I have probably become an annoyance to my friends. And you know what, I don’t care.

I think they are all beautiful in their own special way. And I say thank you to all of the kind and wonderful people who have taken the time to stop and tell us how cute he is. I try to pass that favor along. So, I ask the kind and open-hearted among you to take the time to tell the parent of a “different” child how beautiful they are. It might be the only time they hear it and it can mean so much.

Please share or pass this along to friends and loved ones and ask them to do the same. We need to do our part to mitigate the cruelty and ignorance that exists in this messed up world in which we live.