A Deployment, a Book Launch, and Trying to Be Supermom

For those of you who don't know, my husband is in the Air Force and deployed to Central America this past Monday. It's his second deployment, and relatively speaking, it's a plush deal compared to when he left for Afghanistan for six months in 2011. But even if he was in Montana, it's still three months away from the comforts of home and from his family. Him being away also places special demands on us--and emotionally for him--since he physically has to help me a LOT due to my MS-induced limitations.

That's not even the hardest part. When he deployed to Afghanistan (that's him to the right), our then-3 ½ year-old son wouldn't even speak to him over Skype for probably the first three months; it was just too painful. He acted out for the first month, and woke up crying sometimes. So now with TWO boys who are VERY attached to their dad, I was prepared for the worst. We talked to our oldest's teacher at school and our youngest's teachers at daycare, as well as our part-time nanny, and explained they should probably expect some acting out and negative behavior. The first weeks are always the worst, so I expected this week to be a miserable one, filled with lots of crying, whining, yelling, and acting out.

Instead, it's been a pretty amazing week so far. My oldest is getting fully dressed all my himself for school before he even leaves his room in the morning. My youngest is playing, laughing, and being weird as usual, and both are eating and going to bed with little fuss. They've been great helpers, holding doors for me and cleaning up after themselves, and even a bit more affectionate than usual. I don't know how long this will last, but God seems to have instilled a sense of peace and calm in them that He knew I wouldn't be able give by myself. I also think it helps that they have each other to play with and stay busy/distracted.

In the dozen or so weeks to come, I will once again attempt to play the role of Supermom. But fortunately, I won't be doing it alone. My mother-in-law will be here in four days, and will stay for a couple of weeks until my mom takes over mid-April. That's when things will get crazy; I do have a new book to launch on April 22nd, after all :). This is actually the second book launch my husband will miss, since he was also deployed when Cartel launched in September 2011. I can't tell you how hard it is to have your life partner not be able to be a part of one of the biggest professional moments in your life. However, it IS great that my mom will be here to share it with me, as well as several good friends who will be at the party.

But the launch is only the beginning; the REAL juggling act starts after the launch. I have several trips out of town to promote the book, attend a conference in San Diego, and give presentations in May. Trying to travel for work when you have two kids and your spouse is deployed is no easy task. My mom is 76 and can't completely take care of both boys by herself, so there's a lot of meticulous planning and scheduling that goes into just an overnight trip. Thank GOD I have the most amazing nanny in the world, along with awesome mom friends, my husband's coworkers, and other local friends who are able to help with just simple things that make a world of difference.

For example, life with a deployed spouse is really hard when you're able-bodied, but things are just different for me because I have MS. Honestly, the hardest thing for me when he's gone is making healthy dinners. I can't cook anymore because I can't be on my feet for more than a couple of minutes at a time, so doing anything other than using a toaster oven or a microwave is just too hard. Thankfully, our nanny is a great cook, and I just buy ingredients that she can use to make dishes that leave a lot of leftovers. I also have great friends who are great cooks, and are waiting on standby for me to ask for food that will extend for a few days. I can't roll our trash bins up our steep driveway to the street for pickup day, so I need help with that. I can't change a lightbulb when it requires more than a step stool to reach.

This is the life of a military wife; generally, your blood relatives aren't close by, so you make a new family in a short period of time. Some of them will be friends for life, and some will fade away over time. It's not something we dwell on; it's just a fact of this way of life, and we're grateful for the time we have with each other and the special ways in which we can help each other.

So my life and work continues, albeit at a pace that can be interrupted on short notice. If one of the kids gets sick, all my work comes to a halt for a while, and my clients have always been understanding of my situation. I have to miss certain meetings or opportunities because someone isn't available to watch the boys or pick them up at school/daycare, but those are the breaks. Some days are awful and I just want to sit in our bathroom and cry for hours. Other days are incredibly empowering, knowing that I'm capable of making our children happy and succeeding in my professional life while I'm partly on my own for several months. Until this deployment wraps up at the end of June, I just ask that you pray for my husband while he's away, and that our little family manages to plod along successfully--and hopefully uneventfully :).

The Parity of Parties: A Book Launch vs. A Kid's Birthday

I'm writing this as our family fun-filled weekend comes to a close. Our older son turned six years old on Saturday, and the party was great (thank God). We chose to host it at the Tucson Children's Museum, and everyone (I think) had a really great time. But as I do after every single birthday party we host for our kids, I breathed a huge sigh of relief after it was over. Why do we as parents do this?

My husband will be the first one to tell you I stress out WAY too much over even the smallest of events, and that's to be expected when you have a control freak for a wife. When I look back at all the little things I worried about that I really didn't need to worry about, I started thinking about some of the parallels between planning a simple birthday party for a child and what seems like a more complex party for the release of my new book (which is next month).

I should preface this comparison with an explanation that I'm one of those people who has high social needs. You know those personality tests you can take that have all those weird letter combinations that try to encapsulate who you are? I'm not just a big S; I'm an S painted on the side of the Good Year blimp. I want everyone to like me, I hate it when people are mad at me, and I want lots of people to show up and have not just a good time, but an aMAZing time at any party I host.

Unfortunately for my son, who could have a blast in an empty room with two friends and three balloons, I tend to transfer those needs to my kids. Will the parents talk to each other, or just spend the two hours buried in their phones? Will the kids get along and play, or will they destroy stuff or end up needing a trip to the ER? Will the cake taste good, and will there be enough for the kids AND the adults? Will I have time to be a good hostess and spend a decent amount of time talking to all the parents and thanking them for bringing their kids?

Now let's transfer all of that neurosis to the adult world. I've already gotten a bunch of RSVPs for the book launch party, which is a really good sign, considering the party is a month away. At least a few of those are VIPs I was hoping would attend, and I think there will be plenty more as we get closer and people get a better feel for their schedules. But I still have a LONG list of things I'm worrying about: will I have enough food for everyone? Will they like the food? Will people introduce themselves and talk to each other, or just stand around? Will I sell/sign enough books to make it worth the while of the bookseller at the party, or will they have a ton of books left over? Will they have enough or run out? And bring in the MS equation: will my body run out of steam and prevent me from getting around to everyone?

My husband is always the voice of calm and reason when I get like this, which is made that much harder by the fact he's deploying tomorrow morning for three months and won't be here for the party. It's actually the second book launch he's missed, as he was deployed to Afghanistan when Cartel launched in September 2011. Fortunately, my mom will be here to help me get through everything, and the party is being held in a hotel lounge ==> bar. My husband tries constantly to remind me that, both physically and mentally, I can only do so much. I pay a heavy price when I overdo things physically, and too much stress from overdoing things mentally can also have a very negative impact on my body.

So at this point, I'm working on just doing what I can, and being okay with saying "I've done all that I can." All the invitations have gone out, I'm working with my publicist to get the word out and line up some media interviews right before the party, and I'm keeping the buzz going through mentions at Metro Chamber and Hispanic Chamber social events. It'll be a great party, I'll sell books, I'll have a great time...and I'll be relieved when it's over (insert smiley face here).

My Dual Life of Books and Crawfish

Yesterday was one of those days that served as a perfect example of the weird dual life that I lead. The morning started out with cleaning up the house to prepare for our annual crawfish boil that evening. The usual stuff for us: doing laundry, picking up toy cars and action figures from random spots around the house, and my husband going for a beer/wine run. Then he took the boys to tae kwon do class while I got ready for my "Conflict on the Border" panel at the Tucson Festival of Books.

I was lucky enough to be a presenting author at the 2012 Festival, but it was physically a miserable time for me. I developed an awful sinus infection, and I was barely able to make it through my panel and the author dinner that followed. The next morning I had to teach part of a class on drug cartels, during which I developed a fever and had to leave early. I spent the rest of the day in bed in my hotel room more or less unable to walk. Needless to say, I didn't have very good memories of Tucson after that--until we moved here, of course, and I fell in love with it!

So when I arrived at the Festival yesterday on the University of Arizona campus on a 72˚ sunny day, my disposition was considerably more positive. I was slated to be part of a panel for the UA Confluencenter for Creative Inquiry and their Voices Across Borders program. I didn't know what to expect as far as turnout because it was the program's first year at the Festival, and the panel was taking place at the FAR east end of the event, away from the hub of the vendors and other panel venues. Fortunately, the turnout was pretty good! The questions and comments made by audience members were interesting and I think there was a good dialogue between them and the panelists.

After the panel was over, I was able to say hello to several friends, old and new, who came out to see the panel: Ricardo Ainslie, who is a professor at the University of Texas and author of The Fight to Save Juárez, my new friend Lindajoy (who I met on my flight from LAX to Tucson on Friday), and two other local friends who were kind enough to take time out of their day to see me.

I was the only one with published books that were available (sort of), so I slowly electric-scooted my way to the signing area and sat by myself without really knowing what to expect. My new book isn't out yet, so I wasn't going to be signing that, and I had no idea if they were carrying copies of Cartel or the Spanish translation, El Cartel. It turns out they did! I signed several copies of Cartel, and was told that the copies they had on hand sold out, which is awesome. I'm a member of the Tucson Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, and I was very pleasantly surprised to have President Lea Márquez Peterson stop by the signing to tent to say hello and tell me she really enjoyed the presentation. I was also able to hand out several gorgeous book info and discount cards that Palgrave Macmillan made for me, as well as several invitations to locals for my book release party on April 22nd.

But the day did NOT end there. As soon as I got home, our annual crawfish boil final preparations were well under way, and our guests started to arrive shortly afterwards. We had a great turnout and a fun mix of friends, including my husband's coworkers and some of our neighbors. We ordered 40 pounds of crawfish and a king cake, both of which we had shipped overnight from Louisiana. Friends brought several yummy desserts and some hamburgers and hot dogs for all the kids, and honestly there weren't too many leftovers--we definitely went through all the mudbugs (as crawfish are also known). All the kids behaved well, nobody fell into the pool, nobody broke anything, and nobody needed to take a trip to the ER; that's a success in my book.

We don't entertain as much as we'd like, but it was truly a great party. We managed to clean up a large part of what was left out, and even though everything ended by 9pm, my husband and I were both wiped out! I think at one point, I just leaned over to rest my head on the arm of our couch and the next thing I knew, my husband was patting me on the shoulder and telling me to go to bed. I had a great night's sleep, and now today I start the process all over again--this time, prepping to head to Phoenix tomorrow for two days at the Border Security Expo 2014. More blog posts to come about that event!

A Class on Mexico's Drug War...or Dr. Phil?

I'm typing this from my hotel room in Commerce (sort of Los Angeles), California after wrapping up teaching a full-day class on Mexico's drug war. This is the second time I've done this class for the Los Angeles High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (better known as LA HIDTA), and it's the first work trip I've taken since I started writing this blog. So, I wanted to share a little about what the traveling experience is like for a consultant (like me) with MS.

First off, making these trips is always so much easier when it's a return trip. The people I work with already know my MS "issues," and are ready to happily accommodate my special needs. They hooked me up with disabled assistance through my Southwest Airlines reservation and an accessible room at the hotel. The training coordinator who picked me up at the airport already knew to keep the back seat of his truck empty so he could fit my walker. Little things like that really make me feel awesome :).

While I have taught this class before, this session was different because it was being recorded for future streaming (for sale) to law enforcement agencies across the country. HellOOOOO, passive income! But, I digress. Even though I'm just sitting there for eight hours, teaching a full-day class really sucks the life out of me by hour seven, so I made sure to have a healthy dinner and go to bed early for a full night's sleep. I rarely sleep well on the road and it didn't help that I had a 5:30am wake up, but I felt more decent than usual this morning.

When I arrived at the classroom, the set-up was slightly different than last time. Instead of having me in a normal office chair next to a desk, they had an eNORmous plush leather chair next to a small side table on a daïs, with a stack of my books and some random trophy on the table. Someone there asked jokingly if this was the drug war class or Dr. Phil, and I about lost it! It was very much a talk show set-up, but it definitely was THE most comfortable I have ever been as a trainer.

And I'm very happy to say the class went extremely well! It was almost a full house of 44 students, plus twenty more who logged in for a live video stream. Given that this class will be archived for use for at least six months, I'm thrilled that it was a great audience, I felt good, and only had a few speech lapses that I noticed.  This is when I stop in the middle of a sentence because I have to search very hard for the word I'm trying to use. Sometimes it's a very simple word and sometimes it's more complicated, but it can be embarrassing (for me, anyway) when my pause is too long. I have a feeling that to observers, it lasts a split second, and I'm just hyperaware of it. Maybe all people do it and it's not an MS thing at all, but I just notice it. I quickly forgot all about it after I sold all ten copies of my first book, Cartel, that I brought with me!

Afterwards I was pretty tired mentally, but my body was faring better than I expected. I don't exactly go crazy on these trips; I didn't have a rental car, but when I stay in a hotel with a restaurant, I rarely leave anyway. It was a luxury for me to just be able to go to my room, take a shower, get room service, and watch TV (or write a blog post) until bedtime. Then it's an early flight home tomorrow to get back to my family and help my husband prepare for our annual crawfish boil on Saturday evening. First, however, is my panel called "Conflict on the Border" at the Tucson Festival of Books early Saturday afternoon, so keep an eye out for that post later in the weekend!