I'm married to a 34 yr old man

Yesterday was JP's birthday. I hate the fact that he had to spend it over there. I had sent him the calendar for his birthday, and I think he liked that. With his new satellite thing up and running over there, we talk pretty much every day. He is 9 hours ahead of me, so when he's done working for the day, settling in for the night, I am eating lunch. If I were still working at McShithole, I wouldn't be able to talk to him near as much. So there's another plus. So yesterday, for his birthday, I got rid of mom for a while, and he and I had one of our online "dates". Haven't done that in a long time, it was nice.

Most of the time I think I'm doing pretty good here, too busy to wallow in missing him. Sending him packages all the time, getting ready for school, the projects mom and I have going on here, it's productive, and serves a purpose in keeping my mind busy, too. But a couple of nights ago, I did have a few moments of weakness. I was in bed, about to turn out my light when I saw the plastic bag tucked just under my dust ruffle. Inside that bag is the scent of my husband. When we got back from Florida, I discovered that I had some of JP's dirty laundry. I washed and put away all but one shirt. It smells like him. Mom had the idea to close it up in a plastic bag to preserve it. I pulled it out of the bag and just hugged if for a few minutes and cried. That's all I allowed myself. I put it back for another day, wiped my tears and went to sleep.

The Guards checks are still not right, and it's causing a real pain in my ass. I want to get the budget back to balanced, since the KIA payments can't come out of my checks anymore. The one nice thing about it is that when it does get straightened out, they will include all the back pay for the time since he's been over there. So I should be able to easily get things on track then.

I listed the old van on Carsoup.com yesterday, too. I'm hoping to sell that quickly, get it out of my way, stop paying insurance on it, and I could sure use the money, either for school, my laptop, or pay a big chunk of my braces off.

I have another package I'm getting ready to send, even though I sent him 2 just Monday. It's one of the only ways I feel like I have some control over the situation. It's the only way I have to still be able to take care of him. I just want him to be as comfortable as possible with such a horrible situation. Plus, I want him to always know that we are constantly thinking of him, and that we love and miss him every day.

I finished the black panel of the afghan I'm knitting. It's almost 6 feet long. I started last night on the next panel, it's a blue. I'm just going to use any color yarn I can find, it's just a simple knit, no pattern. Mostly it's something to keep my hands busy in the evenings. And it will be a heavy blanket for those winter nights when I'm all alone. I will be making it big enough though, so when JP comes back, he and I can cuddle under it together.

Nothing to do now on my college admissions except sit and wait. As soon as they get my transcripts from Jackson, they will send me more information, but until then, I have to be patient, and I'm not good at that. They also have all the financial aid information they need, just waiting to hear from the government on that one. Meanwhile, school starts in less than 2 weeks. I did find out that I can enroll in the college writing class without taking the prerequisite testing thanks to doing so well on my ACT tests 16 years ago. The admissions clerk called the instructor while I was there in her office, and he said I can go ahead and register for the class online, and if it won't let me (because I don't have the test scores entered online by the school) then I can bring it in, and he will sign off on it in person! I will need to take a Math accuplacer test, since my math score on my ACT was pretty low. But I should be ok, maybe a bit of brushing up with the help of Alex's math books. How awful, a 33 year old woman needs to study 6th grade math. But whatever it takes, that's what I'm willing to do!