I'm still here

But I'm really very busy and kind of sick with a lingering cold.

Between nursing and toddler wrangling and Thanksgiving and planning for a PCS in the spring, my hands have not been free to write.

Pending a medical clearance, we are crossing the ocean in April. 

I'm afraid to type where we are going lest I jinx it and my ass ends up here, alone and raising two kids while my husband does his thing overseas. 

There is much to report and so little time to do it.

And a part of me does not want to share what's ongoing beyond family and few friends not only due to superstition but also due to privacy concerns and my own reluctance to post on something in public that I'm still processing. 

Most of the time, I think that the sharing of information that has not been fully considered or realized by the writer is a mistake. And not just a mistake of content or narrative. More importantly, it can impede the writer-person's integration of the information fully into one's life. It takes on a life on-line before it's dealt with in reality, and I do make a distinction between the two. 

Committing something to words so soon can prevent flexibility or hasten disappointment or result in regret or create misunderstandings between writer and reader. 

I'm not sure that makes sense. It's just that some things deserve serious reflection before they are shared and that's why I'm not a very good blogger. I have a hard time being spontaneous with my words when I know that I have to share them.

Yes, it all sounds so very major and so very obliquely dramatic (or dramatically oblique), but it isn't.  Don't worry. It's just living life--a military life, at that. 

We're still here. We're mostly healthy considering the season and mostly happy considering the sleeplessness and the hormones. 

And I don't use the word "happy" lightly. I mean it. We are happy, and we'll look back on this fall fondly. It's just something I want percolating in my own tired brain, and maybe someday, when I have gathered more wisdom from reflection, I'll share more details from this wondrous and challenging time.

And this is a time in my life when I'm not just taking it day by day, but hour by hour.

That's what you do with a two-month-old baby who likes to eat around the clock and a tornado-toddler hybrid whose moods change like the weather in Texas.

As far as writing is concerned, this is what three hours of sleep a night looks like, and it will have to do.