Being Independent

I feel like I'm a pretty independent person in my marriage. Meeting my husband was an interesting thing. I think until I met him I was definitely one of those women who fell into a relationship and let it become the center of their lives, letting my world kind of revolve around who I was with, which probably isn't the best thing. I wouldn't say I was necessarily clingy, but definitely reliant upon my relationship and man. Meeting Greg forced me to be independent, which I think is a good thing. I had to get a life if I didn't already have one. This is a crucial thing if you're married to a pilot or a person that travels a lot for work.
People ask me a lot about how it is, and I always say that I'm used to it and it's kind of "normal" to me. We've been together almost 8 years now (married for over 3) and he was already a pilot when I met him, so I had to get used to him being away from the beginning. I always say that I'm used to him being home and I'm used to him being away. Both kind of feel normal to me. What's weird is when it's one extreme or the other. Like when he was away for 2-3 months in training to learn to fly a new plane a few times. That was a long time without him home. Or when he first got furloughed and was home every day for like 6 months til he started truck driving. That was also weird. I actually did get kind of sick of him being home so much when he first got furloughed. I joked that he was driving me kind of nuts. Don't get me wrong, I love having him around, it's just that when you're used to having a few days a week by yourself, you get used to doing certain things on those days. I plan things after work with friends, work out more, eat differently, veg on the couch and catch up on trashy shows I TIVOd, spend an hour working on my farms on Facebook (yes, I'm a loser! lol), read on the deck, etc... Those are things I don't necessarily do when he's home, and I really enjoy those things.
I do get freaked out about having children with him gone so much though. I am well aware that I'll be a single parent about half the time and we don't have any family close by, so I worry about that.
While we're in our "holding pattern", I have decided to make the most of it though. Two things I really want to do right now are travel and have children and both are kind of on hold until Greg gets called back from furlough or finds a more lucrative/stable job. In the mean time I've vowed to fill my time with fun things as much as I can. I spend a lot of time with friends. I joined a running group that I really enjoy. I go for drinks, festivals, parties and whatever else my friends and I come up with. I read a lot now. I bike. I don't want to look back on this tough time for us and think that it was just a crappy couple of years that absolutely sucked for me. I want to remember the fun things I did and be glad that I did them before I had kids so that this time doesn't feel wasted. I know if I sit home all the time I will just get depressed and feel like I'm wasting this time. So I don't.