Day 26: Nightmares

I dream every night, but I don't always remember my dreams. I tend to remember the really good or emotional or scary dreams. Like most people, I remember dreams from which I am awoken in the middle. My dreams tend to show me what emotions I'm suppressing or fears I'm avoiding.

Last week my dreams were all about relationships. I knew how much I am missing the close, romantic and intimate relationship with my husband, even though I am trying not to think about it too much. After so long without him, I started feeling very isolated. I have friends and talk to my mom and mother-in-law several times a week, but Chad and I have a closeness that nothing can replace.

I miss the feeling of being in his arms, kissing him, feeling his heart beat. To survive the deployment, I put all those feelings away in a little box. I feel like I have them pretty much under control, but after six months apart, they start surfacing in my sleep. Then he comes home for R&R and I get a little fix. But two weeks or so of rushing around and stressful contact, is almost just enough to make the cravings worse.

Based on my experiences, this is the part that gets a lot of the spouses in trouble. The emotional and/or physical cravings start and they are so strong that they start spending time with people of the opposite gender. The problem is even the most innocent of friendships can be polluted when your emotions are so fragile. I know when I start having these dreams, I am really vulnerable. I make a point not to spend time with anyone male, just because it is too easy to put yourself in a bad position to make a bad decision.

I've seen too many of my friends' marriages struggle with issues of infidelity, physical or emotional, to want to even take the risk. The dreams are always subtle about trying to get close to friends or trying to find my husband. But my dream last night was more obvious. I dreamed a crazy convoluted nightmare that my husband was returning home by ship, escorting the equipment and vehicles home from Iraq. They were attacked and in the confusion, Chad somehow ended up in freezing water with killer whales. The army called me to tell me he was lost at sea, but they hadn't recovered his body, so I refused to believe it. I knew somehow he would find a way home to me. After a day or two, I had to accept that he wasn't coming home because no one could survive in that cold water for longer than a few hours at best.

In the dream, once I'd accepted his death and started grieving, then he turned up alive. I think I'm just so afraid that something is going to happen to him as the days are ticking down so slowly until his return. He will have nearly a week after leaving Iraq before he actually lands in America, which means his time on missions should be winding down in the next couple of weeks. But it can't come soon enough for either of us.

He is just so tired. He is spending 18 hours a day in gear that weighs almost 100 lbs. in 130 degree heat on constant alert. He is just tired. I'm more emotionally tired. I spend a lot of time trying not to think about how much I worry or miss him. I spend a lot of time trying to appease a cranky baby without relief. I get a maximum of two hours a day to myself and then I have to triage what gets done. I know the dream was just a dream, in fact, I think I knew it was a dream at some point in the dream. But the queasy heart twisting fear is real and won't go away until I hold him, wake up next to him, and do it enough that I almost get used to it. Maybe then I'll get a good night's sleep.

Day 65: Nightmare

Last night I had a dream that my husband was killed. In the dream, I was sitting in a room full of soldiers that served with him and he was there (kind of). He asked one of the soldiers to tell me about serving with him. That soldier turned to the rest of the guys and they started telling stories.

As dreams go, they jump around and I was back home trying to deal. I didn't know how to let people know or hadn't really even accepted it. I hadn't been informed officially yet, not sure how I found out. The dream was disjointed, but next people were bringing me food, offering to watch Lil Bit, but I couldn't process that he was gone.

It just didn't seem real. I couldn't grasp that the last time I heard his voice was weeks ago and would be the last time ever. I was doing something in the kitchen and it hit me that he was really for real forever gone. Then his little gmail chat icon turned green on the computer. I rushed to type, "Hey!" But it was just his roommate turning off his things. That was when any and all hope died. And I woke up.

It was all I could do to wait until morning to check for an email from him. I knew if I got up and opened computers, etc. it would wake the baby. I was sleeping very uncomfortably as it was and knew she probably was too with all the noises she was making. Somehow I made it until it was actually time to get up, but there was no email. It was going to be a long day until I heard from him.

I know it was just a dream, but it was very vivid. The emotions were very real. I would have been destroyed. Honestly until he is in my arms, I won't truly be able to completely not worry. Chad's life is in God's hands, and I shouldn't worry, but having faith that God's plan is best for me doesn't mean that he will come home. I will be checking the computer all day. I haven't heard from him since an email Saturday. It has only been 48 hours, but sometimes it gets hard to go so long, especially when he doesn't get much chance to call.

We finally got an email after lunch. He is very stressed out and exhausted, working on an hour or two of sleep for several days. He's had 36-48 hour periods of no sleep. Just ridiculous. I swear to God if he gets killed because we don't have enough troops there to do the job left to them, I will make the army wish they had never heard of me.

But he is alive today. We even got two minutes of video chat before the internet cut out. We got to see his face before the screen froze and he could see us. He got to see and hear his baby daughter being cute and cooperative. She said, "Dada" and pointed at the screen when she saw him. She did some of her new signs and tricks. Later we even took some time to chat for longer than usual.

But it is getting hard. I think as the time gets short, there is more pressure to get things done and he feels like I can just barrel through and make it until I get home, but I have a real fear for his safety and want every contact we can have. Plus, if he doesn't start calling more often, we get distant and he feels very far away from me. I have had enough of this far away b.s. I want him home.

My nightmare just solidified that I really love him, can't imagine my life without him in it. I know distance does make the heart grow fonder and six months from now, I may sound less rose colored about him, but I really do love him for the person he is and the joy he brings to my life and my heart. Plus, I can't wait to see what our life looks like as a family with our daughter. Her birth was so tied up in training and preparations for leaving that we didn't get a lot of time together before he went. Now, she is a full little person, replete with personality, which unfortunately she is demonstrating right now by refusing to lay down and go to sleep. I hear the new "children's" book narrated by Samuel L. Jackson in my head. If you don't know it, google it. Hilarious!!

Day 97: Seriously . . .

As an educator, I wonder MANY things: were these kids raised by wolves? does anyone teach manners anymore? do children have attention spans longer than 15 seconds? what was she thinking when she got dressed today? Why are bodily functions so funny? and why don't children even consider respect important anymore?

As we finish off a week of the most insane scheduling nightmare I've ever seen, I'm really wondering if legislators consider how the laws they make affect the children and educators?

Like most states, we have state standardized testing, in Texas it is called TAKS. The state is trying to move away from generalized testing and toward EOC's, End Of Course exams, but this year we're doing more of the EOC's and we still had to do TAKS testing too. I've lost approximately two weeks of educational time with my students testing them to see what they know, but with zero consequences for failure except at the junior level.

We had to schedule testing all freshman, sophomores and juniors at least twice each. What makes this more of a nightmare is because the testing is end of the course, sometimes we have sophomores or juniors taking freshman courses or freshman taking junior or sophomore courses. Basically, we spent the entire week disrupting a little bit of everyone's schedule.

The past two days, most of my students were testing but I was in my classroom with my four or five stragglers who were not testing. Today and tomorrow, none of my students are testing, but I am stuck in the cafeteria with several hundred students. It was an absolute disaster. My students are trying to finish reading a book. They are not very focused readers as it is, in a cafeteria filled with crazy students, it wasn't pretty.

So instead of teaching and learning, we're relocating, testing, corralling, monitoring, pacing. Legislators talk about adding days to our calendar. Why don't they just give us BACK the days we have. We take two weeks for TAKS (next year STAAR) and two weeks for AP testing and now a week for EOC, which next year will be two. That is six weeks of testing. While not all students will test for all six weeks, the testing disrupts learning for many or most students much of the time.

And on top of all the required testing, we take two more weeks for semester exams and another two weeks for district wide benchmark assessments. Now we're are at nearly ten weeks of testing, give a day or two for each grade level. Imagine how much more we could be learning if we were TEACHING all those days.

Don't even get me started on how much better my students would be doing if I were allowed to teach the way I want to, to hold students and parents accountable for results and work, but here in May, two weeks left to go for the school year, I feel like I've barely scratched the surface with my students.

It just prompts me to ask SERIOUSLY???? as the state heaps more and more regulations and testing on our shoulders and asks us to do more next year with so much less. Why is it so hard to make decisions that make sense. I want to sponsor a law that requires all legislators who make laws requiring state tests/testing to take all such tests and have to visit a school once a year during the state testing to help with scheduling and administering the tests.

I can't imagine they would continue to test us to death once they realized the kind of torture it is for the students and teachers. I tested in three rooms today. In each room was at least one student who just made patterns in the tests and one other who was sleeping, and one other who seemed to be looking everywhere but actually at the test. Already more than 20% of the students I saw today were just blowing off the test.

Seriously, let's spend more time teaching and learning, save a few million dollars and thousands of trees. I understand a need for accountability, but can anyone produce a single study showing me that students are actually more educated now that we test for it? I doubt it, very seriously.