I'm beginning to think that Twists and Turns was a propitious choice of name.  While the blog started out with a singularly specific intent it has evolved along multiple rabbit trails.  I mean, really, where else can you find a blog about full time RV travel, home buying and home renovating, vintage cars, neurotic Weimaraners and PTSD?  This blog is a veritable cornucopia of information!

I've been thinking about PTSD lately and that I should maybe fill in some blanks with regard to my husband.  It seems like we've become a normal American family busy with jobs, school, sports and church.  I haven't written about PTSD in a long time because honestly, I forget about it.  Chronic depression is not something I want to dwell on for any length of time.  It comes and goes and the three non-depressed family members live our lives around it, accommodating when we can and moving forward despite it when we can't.  It doesn't rule us and thankfully, its presence is usually short lived compared to the old days.  After all, Donald is now employed as well as a full time student.

But it ain't easy.

For instance.  On Saturdays, after I run and after Donald makes pancakes, we bicycle to the Salem Saturday Farmer's Market just to have coffee and to buy whatever produce and cheese catches our fancy.  Blissfully, we are now able to leave the boys at home to watch Netflix cartoons in their underwear.  This past Saturday we had a beautiful sunny morning and we enjoyed ourselves at the Market.  Then we decided to go pick up the motorhome because the dealer was fixing a few minor things.  By the time we came home, Donald was done in and had to go to bed.

At 11:30 am.

I get really frustrated when he goes to bed in the middle of the day because we're not talking a 15 minute power nap here.  The only thing that gets him back up is that he has to go to work.  Sometimes I get downright angry, other times I do a lot of heavy sighing and eye rolling.  This past Saturday I was actually well behaved and didn't say anything until he woke up.  When I asked him why he went to bed he explained that his depression was cycling through since picking up the RV.  So I asked him to pinpoint why.  Turns out the dealer and the DMV have messed up our license and it's not taken care of yet.

No big deal, right?  In a normal family this is an inconvenient hiccup.  Not in our family.  Inexplicably, this is the type of thing that sends Donald over the edge and straight into bed.  Honestly, don't try to think it through or rationalize.

Trust me.  I've tried.

This is where I find my lack of patience an extremely unfortunate character flaw.  It's my Achille's heel.   I'm not compassionate in the best of circumstances and even less so when confronted with the same old thing, day after day, for nearly five years.  Sometimes I do okay but other days I'm a horrible companion to the man I swore to love in sickness and in health.   I wonder at God's sense of humour;  I'm positive He has one.  "Oh, yes, let's give the least compassionate woman on the planet to the man who is going to need bushels and bushels of it!"

Still, here we are, warts and all and just glad that we are given a new 24 hour period as a do-over for the previous one.

And it's not all bad.  Donald is being promoted for the second time in less than a year at Target; he is moving out of security and into a senior leadership position while being groomed for an executive position back in the security department for the coming spring.  His confidence level is not what it used to be but I see his potential and, maybe more importantly (because he doesn't listen to what I say!) so do the folks he works for.  He's excited about the new position but also nervous.

He's also performing a wedding for a Navy shipmate the end of this month and he's nervous about anything to do with ministry.  He'll be fine and it's a fairly low-key affair, as far as wedding go.  He's also been hard at work on his dissertation and I'm very proud of him because he is not the scholarly type, never has been and never will be, and this puts him a year ahead of schedule.  Really big deal for a lifelong procrastinator.

Just another Twist and Turn from my end of the world!