The last weekend

**Post 2 of 3 in the Pre-Deployment Nightmarish Posts. We will be back to our regularly scheduled programming soon, I promise.**

Our last weekend before the deployment has come and gone. Steve spent a lot of time today laying out, folding up, and packing things carefully into his bags. He goes back to work tomorrow through Thursday, and then poof. Off they go.
I thought I would be a crying, blubbering, snot-covered mess by now. Especially watching him pack his things. But I'm not. I'm numb to this, it seems. And I think I'm still telling myself that this isn't happening. I mean, he's supposed to leave in less than a week and HE STILL DOESN'T HAVE ORDERS. (Way to go Fort Campbell! You rock our socks right off with your level of preparedness! Especially since you've been planning this deployment for a full year now! Sarcasm!) So maybe that's why it doesn't feel real yet. I dunno.

The only times I've cried so far have been at night while rocking Molly to sleep. I can hear Steve and Sam playing around in the bathroom, finishing up bath-time and brushing Sam's teeth. It always hits me then. The Jesus-Mary-and-Joseph-how-will-I-ever-manage-without-him-? thoughts start hitting me hard.

Ok, I lied. I also started crying at the commissary the other day. I escaped there by myself (another perk of having a husband at home!) and wandered down the Oriental aisle to get some rice. Instant rice, to be exact. It took us something like a year to use up the family size pack of rice baggies and we were finally out. But standing there between the soy sauce and 50lb bags of jasmine rice (seriously, who eats that much?), I started to lose it. "I don't need the family size baggies anymore. I'll never eat that much rice by myself.... waaaaaaahhhhhhh..... Pull it together Jenn. No tears. You gotta at least wait til you get back in the car. Then you can ugly cry. Don't do it in public." Then I went to get milk. The expiration dates were all after Steve's deployment date. Losing it again....

Sweet Sarah volunteered to come over on Sunday to babysit so that Steve and I could go on one. last. date. Sam was down for a nap but Molly was being a diva. So to save Sam's nap and Sarah's sanity, we took Molly with us. No big deal since we didn't have anything really planned. I had to return a couple of things at Target and we planned on getting a new plunger. (Being prepared is priority numero uno around here.) (Also, hot date, huh?) Target was fun (duh) and we hit up the commissary for more produce and a frozen pizza (dinner!) before heading home. Sam did not try and hide his feelings about us invading his alone time with Sarah and he was quite the pill until bedtime. Luckily we got both of them down at a fairly decent hour and cooked our pizza in peace. We got really crazy and ordered our first ever movie on-demand. I know. We are so 2005. But there wasn't jack-diddly on Redbox and we weren't feeling like watching the other four channels that we get (NatGeo, I'm lookin' at you.).

Today was spent going to the park, watching Steve pack, pretending that nothing out of the ordinary is going on, and hanging out in the gorgeous weather that has somehow made its way to us. (Maybe God is trying to make his leaving slightly gentler by not having me cry AND sweat all at the same time?)

It feels like there is still so much left to say to Steve before he leaves, but that saying it will somehow cause this deployment to come faster than it already is. So we just smile at each other and laugh at our kids and talk about how nice the weather is and try to soak up every last second. Because ya just never know.