Who knows what tomorrow brings?

The OH returns tomorrow, at some point, from his trip away. And this is how it's going to be for the foreseeable future. I think we both started looking at this as though it was a one off, and it's not, this is 8 weeks of our lives apart, 3 times a year.

We'll get used to it, of course we will, and this one has really flown by. It was not part of the job when we got together, but now it is. Of course I worry, and I want him home, and I want us to be a family, to be sorted, to be together, but I am worried about what he will be like when he comes back. Maybe he'll just be the same.

Nothing prepared me for hearing the air-raid siren whilst on the phone to him though. Suddenly, it wasn't fun anymore. It wasn't a trip away that earned us extra cash, it was dangerous. But that's the way it is, you know. That's just it.

Since he's been away my grandmother has made the final journey (funeral on Friday) we have discovered we have mice, I've trodden on a slug in the dark in bare feet, the bank have lost and then found £1300 of our money, and so on! It's all been just fine.

And there have been times when the peace has been nice, when the quiet has been nice. And there have been times when the bed has been too big and there have been no arms to run to and no one to lean on and I think we've both found that.

But regardless of whether I think he should be there, he is there, even if he's now coming home. And the lads he leaves behind there, at all different degrees of deployment, need support, even if the reason for them being there is cock-eyed.