Am I strong enough?

One thing that I have learned from Navy Sub life.... You have to be strong.

As a wife of a U.S Sailor and a mother of three, boys mind you. I often find myself being a single-non single parent for months at a clip. Those months apart are most challenging, the car will decide it no longer wants to work right, some household appliance will break down, your house gets torn apart from kids because there is no way you can be in four rooms at the same time to prevent disasters, emails are few and far between and almost always monitored by someone and if you're an unlucky one like some from our boat, the emails will be read and talked about with people who have no reason to know what was in it at all, you're deprived of sex and think about taking up stock in batteries, you learn what deployment insomnia is and you'll mumble and grumble "why does this only happen when he's gone?"

I'm also a person that NEEDS to stay busy, which I think might add to some of my stress. As a 7 1/2 month pregger I decided to re-paint the entire inside of our house....while he was at sea. I picked up armature photography, quilting, scrapbooking, couponing, gardening, baking, pretty much I strive to be a Martha Stewart clone minus the prison time.  I often have about 3 things I'm working on, right now it's a cathedral quilt, canning/baking, prepping to take senior pictures and the most time consuming...starting a business. Although I have my husbands full support and willingness to listen to my never ending talk about vendors, marketing and the future, he still isn't there to be 100% supportive.

Sometimes I get the "uh huh" or "oh cool" monotone response, I get upset but then have to remember that this man is putting in a 12hr shift of craziness known as Navy life. He is the only unfortunate person on his boat to be in 3 divisions and is tasked numerous things beyond the norm. I try to stay positive and supportive all while masking my own frustrations of the days business.

The pressure will build up over weeks and explode into a 'I'm not gonna cook you lil jerks anything to eat, go eat a bowl of cereal and mom is gonna go sit in the shower for 2 hrs, you better not bug me or mommy dearest will come out' mess(you like my run on sentence? good because I did). The kids sit there looking at each other trying to figure out why mommy has gonna coo coo.

I wonder sometimes how strong am I really? Can I really do this? Then I look at all the pictures in my house, I look at my husband, my children and know I not only have to be strong for me I have to do it for all of them......So I suck back all my emotions and frustrations and go through another day of a Navy Sub life.

These are all my knuckle heads :-)

What Navy tales do you have that makes you wonder "am I really strong enough for this?"