{ Meal planning and saving the cactus }

Day 4 without hubby, and I'm quite done with this already.  I have always been someone who has managed to deal with the separations, after all, 20 years of military active duty life meant a lot of separations, sometimes months at a time.

I just got on with life and made the best I could of the situation.

But, I'm not liking this at all.  I think in a way my mind settled into a new normality, one where there were no deployments or long periods of time apart, and just when I was getting used to that, here it comes.  It's almost over though, and I'm counting down the minutes until he walks through the door.

In case you think it's just me feeling this way, it's not.  He is not enjoying this time away from us either and is quite ready to be done and back in his home with his family.

My days have been busy, keeping up with a routine has always been the easiest way to deal with any kind of separations.

I continue to get up early, do what I need to do, drive my girl back and forth from work, cook dinner, spend time with the kids and clean, do laundry and all that fun stuff.

Woke up this morning to bright lightning and thunderstorms.  They puttered down on and off for about two hours and then gave way to beautiful blue skies.

As always, the very first thing I do each morning is take care of the pets, and that means uncovering the bird cage and saying good morning to them.  It's sweet how they immediately start chirping away the minute the covers come off.

Next is this little Mister who is completely confused as to the whereabouts of his daddy.  I find him in this spot throughout the day, just watching, waiting.

It's heartbreaking at times, because he whines and you can see that he is missing his daddy.  You know the bond between dog and his owner is something of beauty.

This morning I decided to give the kitchen a good top to bottom clean.  Usually I do my daily cleaning and tidying, but once a week, I try to do a more in depth cleaning, meaning wiping down all the cabinets, taking everything off counters, wiping appliances really well etc.

I just love the smell and look of a clean kitchen.

Once that was done, I sat down to compile the new menu plan for the next two weeks.  I've talked about this before, and I've shown you all how I do it so I'm not going to bore you with the details.

I did pull a few recipes from this slow cooking cookbook, it is one of my favorites as I don't think there are many recipes from it that I wouldn't try, probably one or two that I know my family wouldn't enjoy, but all the others are delicious.

One of my daily tasks is to take care of the plants, water the ones that need it daily and so on.  I noticed that my beautiful little cactus was not doing very well, some of it's branches had fallen down and were looking quite sickly.

I did a quick clean up and transplanting and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it takes and comes back to life.

The rest of the day was spent pottering around the house, hanging out with my girl and then a quick run to Subway for dinner for myself and the kids, just a little treat for the kids. 

I then went through my yarn stash and picked out these 3 to start on a little project that I want to make for my bedroom.  It will actually go on my wall.  I'm going to start on it as soon as this post is published.

Feels so weird saying that, it's been a long time since I've even talked about a new crochet project.  Goodness!!!

Anyway, I have a busy day tomorrow, I'll be back and forth taking Jas to work and running errands, doing the usual housework which will no doubt include a mountain of laundry, and hopefully getting the new water heater installed since they failed to show up today.  Yes, that story is still ongoing.

Right now, I'm waiting for my hubby to call, so I'll pop on a documentary and get cracking with my crochet.