Pantry full of panic

We're at the point in the month paycheck-wise where digging up something to eat becomes an exercise in creativity and tolerance. I have exactly zero of both at the moment. I had no idea of this before, but it turns out that milk is the fulcrum on which my world balances.

Behold:

In the morning, milk goes in coffee and chai tea, both of which provide me with the necessary caffeine to dart around a classroom of half-asleep twenty-somethings, trying to make comma splices exciting!

In the afternoon, it goes in the children's organic mac and cheese I consume with religious fervor, partly because the messages on the box are so comforting, and the shapes of the pasta so inviting-- peace signs, bunnies, cartoon aardvarks-- and you get the feeling the company probably hates the president, which is a big fat red "check plus" in my book.

At night, milk goes in more tea. And sometimes it goes in the cookies I churn out in response to stress (mine will be the only children in the world who equate the smell of freshly baked cookies with a drunk and sobbing mommy. Or maybe not-- maybe I'll have my shit together by the time I have kids and move on to repressing my emotions like an adult.) And if you can't sleep? Milk again.

And on the weekends, milk certainly goes into making muffins, which are God's way of apologizing for the week.

So without milk, what are we? Certainly not human, certainly not civilized. We are drinkers of too strong, stomach-eating coffee, we are consumers of apples instead of hippie liberal pasta, and at night we toss and turn in a fitful milk-less stupor, stretched between sleep and wakefulness in that miserable netherworld of the doze. And why should we rest? Saturday morning approaches with empty hands.

Perhaps it's abundantly evident by now, but the stress from my husband's job is seeping in under the doors like carbon monoxide. We're doing a little better-- going on walks in the evening, making time for moronic television, trying to eat better, but we're still staring down the gauntlet that is February: by the end of the month we should know which direction his job will be taking us for the next several years, a list of possible bases, a narrower focus of missions. The weeks leading up to it are agony. He works as hard as he can, but in the end, very little of the process is under his control.
{Tangentially related: Have you ever looked at someone and been able to tell that they are giving everything they possibly can in a situation? It looks kind of like constipation mixed with yearning. That's how my husband looks most of the time, and it makes me want to scoop him up like a puppy and hug him and stretch out all his loose skin and make him relax, which is difficult to do with a grown man and even more difficult when I myself can't relax.}

For me this means that in less than a month, it's very possible that I will need to quickly quit my job, pack up, travel to the next duty station and find us a place to live, and then help move, settle in and commence looking for another job. Or not. Or we could hang around in limbo for seven months dodging hurricanes, which is what happened last time.

And there's nothing either of us can do at this point to affect the outcome, so there's no point in getting stressed out. I repeat this to myself at night like a mantra.

And yet, and yet...

MILK! There's no fucking milk!