Here in my house, pity parties are not allowed to last the night. Sure, it’s okay sometimes to sit with your glass of wine and your bag ‘o chocolate and moan because you’re doing it on your own again, or because you’re little family won’t be complete at Christmas, or because not one child will have dad home for their birthday this year….. but then you pick your bloated, wine filled ass off that couch and you pull yourself together. Life moves on.  And sometimes pulling yourself together just involves enough energy for yoga pants and wiping the grime from the toilet before someone thinks there’s a frat house using your bathroom. But it’s still progress. In my house, we move forward because experience has taught me nothing gets better if you’re waiting for the ideal moment to try. So last fall when Dh left I decided we wouldn’t be sitting on our butt waiting for community to magically appear and make this 4th deployment easier. We were going to make community. Inspired by Sarah Smiley and her book, we started our Invitations Deployment Project. Each Sunday, we invite someone new for dinner. Each Sunday, we have a new chance to expand our community. Tonight’s dinner was on the road. It was getting harder to book things when our house is on the market, and so we decided to go somewhere that we knew we couldn’t get them to come to us: the firehall! After a few emails they agreed to let the crazy lady and her kids bring ham dinner over, and so after cleaning up for a showing and leaving the place smelling like the ham I had in the slow cooker, we packed it all…