Today. D-Day.

Deployment day.

Never a fun day. Never easy, no matter how many times you've done it. This is our fourth. I keep hoping this means we now have more behind us than ahead of us. We'll see. We've been trying to make the distinction for Meredith between daddy going to work on base and daddy going to work on the boat. When we talk about the boat she always says "Daddy's at work on the boat with Mr. Roto" (one of our friends and Brian's fellow squadronmate). I think she gets it. We decided, since Brian had such an early brief this morning, that I wouldn't drive him into work. It would mean waking the kid up early and getting her off schedule which just wasn't worth it since her schedule already gets thrown so much every time he leaves. So he gave her big snuggles and kisses last night before bed. It was better that way. I think both of us, this morning, realized it would've been so much more painful for all of us to have driven him into work. There would've been more tears all around. So he got up at the crack of dawn and left... and I attempted to go back to sleep for an hour (unsuccessfully).

The morning went surprisingly well. I had things to do that kept me busy the entire three hours Meredith was at preschool. I got to have coffee with a friend I hadn't seen in a while, and got to run some important errands. And this afternoon a big basket of chocolates and treats was delivered to me by a group of very special friends. Chocolate can make anything better, right?

Its hard to gauge whether deployments are easier with kids or without. We did two before we had kids... and while you don't have to worry about the emotions involved with them you also don't have them there to keep you busy. Meredith and I have a pretty good routine down that forces me to not lay in bed and wallow all day. Which is good (although sometimes I could use a good wallow!).

So now it starts. 1 day down, 5 months to go...