notjustamilitarywife

I haven’t posted in forever, mainly because I just got back from spending two weeks in my real (not military-required) home in VA, celebrating the holidays with my family and friends.  I did bits and pieces of writing work over the two weeks, but mostly I just took it easy.  It was nice!

Now that we are back, I am ready to throw myself back into writing, full throttle style.  Unfortunately, I’ve also got a ton of work in store for me to get ready for our move.  We are moving from TX to GA in Mid February and between now and then I have to find a renter for our house (and do all the associated paperwork and such), get movers lined up, get all the DITY paperwork in line, craigslist a BUNCH of stuff that we won’t have room for in our new, smaller home, and a bunch of other boring but necessary stuff.  It’s frustrating to not be able to devote myself full time to the freelance career that I am so eager to lauch.  The reality, however, is that right now I don’t have a whole lot of deadlines for my writing, whereas there are some very firm deadlines for getting the rest of my life in order.

I’m going to try to be better about posting in the next few weeks about the trials and tribulations of getting ready for a (partial DITY) cross country military move.  My secret dream is that this blog will one day be a resource for other military spouses and families who experience the same things I do . . . so I’l try to make it informative.

There have been a few TDYs in my husband’s 2 years of service that have worked out in our favor- where we’ve come away with a little extra cash.  More often than not, however, we’ve just broken even, or even put out more than the Air Force covers.  I’m sure non-military people think we’re spoiled for “making money” off a TDY even occasionally.  But really, I think the Air Force is pretty much always on the winning side of the transaction.

On my husband’s most recent TDY (just over 3 weeks at survival training) his original orders actually authorized a total TDY pay of $85 LESS than the cost of his airplane ticket, shuttle ticket, and lodging (before even taking into account his food costs).  Luckily he was able to get them to amend the orders, so we end up breaking even with food factored in- but the $200+  we had to spend on supplies for the field, we’ll never see again.

We’ve had friends that have walked away from long term TDYs with thousands of extra dollars, but I don’t see us ever getting one of those assignments.  Anyways, you can’t put a price on spending time with your spouse- even the most lucrative of TDYs means separation!

We were supposed to close on the Georgia house today, but looks like things won’t be official until Wednesday now.  The reason for the delay?  Do you really have to ask?

Well, it’s not fully accurate to blame this on the Air Force.  It’s a combination of bad timing, poor communication, and it all just happens to relate to Justin’s survival training.

I was under the impression that we would be closing via Power of Attorney in Georgia.  Only about a week prior to closing was I told no- we’d be doing closing via mail.  Well, OK, no problem. . . . Except there was a problem.

It took me a day to realize it.  But then I thought about it and looked at a calendar.  Justin wasn’t getting back from survival until the 13th (various parties knew about this).  The 15th (today) is a Monday.  That meant there was no way we were going to find a Notary and then be able to overnight the paperwork on the 14th (a Sunday).  Meaning there was no way we could have the paperwork there on Monday the 15th.

. . . . . . . .

Once again with the military and the timing issues . . . we’ve got it worked out, though.  Of course it involves extra expense and more hassle.  But that’s no big surprise! : P

I haven’t traveled with Justin since last Christmas.  I’ve traveled without him- to Virginia, 3 times, to other parts of Texas, to Las Vegas, to Massachusetts, and to Tennessee.  And he’s traveled- to Georgia and to California, and to a few random places, just for a few hours, during long training flights.  But in all of 2008, we’ve not even taken a day trip together.

The reason for this, of course, is the military.  Justin was in formal training for nearly the entire year, and  formal training means pretty much no leaving the general area, except for training flights.  We even lost out on some money when we bought tickets to VA for a friend’s wedding in September, thinking he could get a three day weekend approved since his training was essentially finished at that point (but no dice).

Granted, in the grand scheme of things, this isn’t so horrible.  We aren’t one of those couples who are fused together at the hip and can’t function independently of one another (Thank God,  or we’d be pretty screwed!).  It just starts to wear on you, a little bit.  I can function just fine on a trip without my husband, but it would always be nicer to have him around (I wouldn’t have married him if I didn’t like him quite a bit).

What has made me think about all this is that we’re trip planning again, and finally, it will be a trip together.  In February of next year, my parents are graciously taking the whole family to Orlando for some Disney fun.  My nephew, Landon will be taking his very first plane ride to get there at the ripe old age of 7 months (my parents have this tradition of taking kids to Disney before they are old enough to *really* appreciate it or ever remember it- I suspect it’s because they are, deep down, kids at heart!).  The only problem?  We’re scheduled to move halfway across the country (Texas to Georgia) two weeks later.  Hopefully, most of the hard physical labor involved in the move will be done by other people (the movers).  Still, there is a ton of work that goes into setting up and executing a move.  I’m a little nervous about vacationing so close to such a big life event.

However, this is the only time that works for everyone.  Dad’s a minister, so March is out due to Easter season.  And come April, Justin starts up formal training AGAIN at our new base, and we go another nine months where we can just forget about planning any joint trips.  Yup . . .  here we go again!

Justin and I also really want to plan a trip to Italy.  We’ve wanted to go back pretty much since we left it, in 2004, and my grandpa just left me a little money that he hoped I would spend on travel.  However, we’re trying to start a family, and Justin thinks (and I agree) that it would be better to do the trip before I’m pregnant and before we have a newborn!  Unless I have some major fertility problems, though, that’s just not going to happen.

Tonight while discussing the Disney trip with my mom, I vented a little bit about the inconvenience of this trip happening right before our move, and my worries that Justin will resent that we won’t be able to go to Italy before  our family expands.  Now I feel terrible for doing so, because later my dad called, saying that mom had told him the trip was going to cause more problems than happiness.  I feel so terrible now.  I tried to reassure him that no, I am really excited for this trip and very grateful for it.  I just feel a little overwhelmed when I think about the first third of 2008 and all the craziness it’s going to bring for us!

As you may or may not know, I recently quit my job to try my hand at being a full-time freelance writer .  Over the past month and a half, I’ve written in various places around my house: at the antique desk in the office, with the laptop balanced on my knees in bed, working simultaneously on the laptop and the desktop on the L-shaped relic from my Roanoke apartment, lying on my stomach sprawled on the chaise lounge, typing away at the dining room table.  My workspace for the past two weeks has involved sitting cross-legged on the guest bed, with the ironing board as my ‘desk.’  None of these options, however, have had all the elements I’d like for the  ‘perfect work space.’  I don’t know quite yet what exactly the ‘perfect work space’ would be, but I’ve been daydreaming about it a lot recently.

I have some office tools and organizational solutions that I’d like to implement.  I also have some sweet thoughts about creating a comfortable and efficient space for my work-at-home venture.  So far I have implemented none of them.  Why?  It’s because I am falling into what I call the “Military Procrastination Trap.”

I kinda made the term up.  But I think most military spouses out there will know what I am talking about.  There comes a point, when you’ve got a set of orders telling you where and when you’ll next be moving, where you stop thinking in terms of “what I’ll do here,” and begin thinking in terms of, “what I’m going to do in my next place.”  Sure, I could hang my bulletin boards and calendars here- I could arrange a perfect work space- but is it worth it for the two months I have left here?  I daydream about my perfect work station, but it’s in Georgia.  Thoughts of attempting it here are always immediately cut short with “what’s the point?”

It’s not just my work station that is suffering.  I feel like this phenomenon is spilling over into all aspects of my life.  For instance, again with my work, I’m excited about attempting to network and find clients who may hire me on a long term basis to do writing work for their company.  But I have zero motivation to do it here.  Again- What’s The Point?  Let’s say I booze and schmooze and I find someone who wants to hire me to do some writing contract work.  By the time they’ve gotten it approved by higher ups and are ready to consult with me about the assignment (especially considering we are headed into the holiday season), I’ll have one foot out the door to the East Coast.  I feel antsy and uncomfortable NOT doing any networking or active searching for local clients- but it just feels pointless to do it here when my time here is up so soon.

I don’t mind moving, in that I like seeing new places and having the opportunity to set up life in new communities.  But I hate, hate, HATE the period of limbo between two homes!  I feel ineffectual and mired. I’m trying to overcome the ‘what’s the point’ attitude (I think I might write more about this on my other blog), but it’s really hard in the aspects of life related to a military move.

This evening I was having what started out as a perfectly mundane conversation with my husband on the phone (he’s still out doing survival training).  It went something like this:

J: I bought the Harold and Kumar movie at the BX tonight.  I need a laugh tonight.

Me: Oh, that’s nice.  Bring it home so I can watch it too at some point.  Hey, I just finished making a totally kick ass Xmas centerpiece for the dining table .

J: That’s great.  We’ll see if I like it when I get home.

Me: I know you will, because even if you don’t I’m going to ignore your negative comments and mentally insert delighted ravings over my design sense in their place.

J:  I know you will.  Oh, when I get home we’re going to have to have a conversation about what you should do if I ever go missing.

{Moment of dead silence from me}

Me: Um, Ok?

J: Yup, well, we can talk about that later.  I’m going to go watch my movie now!

I love how nonchalantly he brought that up . . .  ahh, military life.

Before my husband went out into the woods early, early morning on Sunday, I asked what day he would be back in contact.  “Probably Thursday,” he told me.

So naturally I carried  my phone around all day today- but no call.

He’ll probably be back in contact tomorrow.  I counted on my fingers and realized that makes more sense- he was probably just mistaken when he told me today (I mean, it was like 3am and he was preparing to go spend several days in the freezing cold mountains of Washington- I can’t blame him for being a little preoccupied).  Not being able to talk to him is rough, but I’ll make it another day.

I’ve been thinking about blinging the house all out with Christmas decorations as a nice surprise for him when he gets home.  Granted, I’m the one who gets all excited about all things Christmas, so it might be more of a treat for me than him.  I’m also questioning the sanity of trying to put up a Christmas tree with five cats in the house.  Given the normal life span of the domestic cat, and the youth of all our felines, plus adding in my huge love of Christmas decor, I think I’m just going to have to train them all to behave.  It could be a long few weeks.

I haven’t posted here for a while, which seems odd really, considering my husband’s off on TDY and you’d think I’d be bursting at the seams with rants about military separation and such.

I guess I just don’t want to keep repeating myself.  Yes, I miss him, and it’s not much fun every time I want to share with him some tidbit of my day, and then I remember for the thousandth time that he’s currently unreachable (braving the snow in the mountains of Washington state).  But haven’t I expressed as much here before?  Nothing’s changed.

Luckily tomorrow I should have an eight hour window in which I can speak with him.  Hopefully I’ll get the full eight hours to unload all the talking that I’ve had to keep to myself over the last five days.  I’m thinking, though, that I probably won’t be that lucky.

A lot can happen in five days.  For instance, in the past five days, I was in a bank robbery ! After we’d recovered from the incident (you can read about it via the previous link to my other blog, where I’ve already covered it)my mom asked me, “If something HAD happened to you, would they have pulled Justin out of the woods to tell him?”

Good question, and one I am not sure of the answer to.  Would there have even been a way to get word to Justin out in the snow if I’d been hurt or killed in the robbery (or by some other means, for that matter)?   Would my incident trump the Air Force’s need to train my husband to serve the country?

Call me callous, but I feel like if I had been killed (knock on wood), they might as well have left him out there to complete his training.  He’s got to be going through one of the most miserable times of his life right now, and god forbid he have to repeat any of it- after all, if I’m truly gone what’s calling him back going to change?  Granted, I might feel differently about the matter if I were actually deceased right now.  Luckily, I’m not, and this is all just morbid, hypothetical speculation.  : )

It’s gotten rather chilly in the evenings and as I was getting ready to head out the door yesterday evening, I pulled out a little jacket that I haven’t worn in a while.  This pin was stuck to the left chest area:

In case you can’t make out all the words, the piece on the left says “Royal Navy” in the scrolls and the portion on the right reads, “The Lord watch between me and thee when we are absent one from another.”

My mom bought two of these pins, one for me and one for my sister, in 1993 at a little flea market in England.   The story behind them, she was told, was they were made for British women to wear as a tribute to their sweethearts serving in WWII.  My mom thought they were kitschy and sweet and presented them to her daughters, at the time 12 and 9.  Given my propensity for losing things, it’s a wonder I still have it, one week from the big 2-6.

It seemed a little ironic to me that my mom would have bought this for me all those years ago, and now I’m a military wife.  And I pulled it out, for the first time in a while, during a period when Justin’s separated from me on a TDY.  Granted he’s not in the Navy, let alone the Royal one, but you see what I’m getting at here.  I like the idea of having a little trinket tribute to my husband while he’s away.  I think I’m going to wear it more often in the next few weeks.

My husband left for survival training today.  Yesterday, he asked me to go get his phone off the counter and bring it to him.  I spent a couple minutes stupidly looking all over the kitchen and totally missed what I was *really* supposed to be finding:

He’d bought me beautiful red roses.  And even though my logical opinion on cut flowers is that they are generally a waste of money, as they are not a lasting good and don’t provide you with tangible benefits such as nourishment or entertainment-still, I feel blessed to have a thoughtful and caring husband- and I love them.  Look closer at the tag:

I love the thought.  Of course, roses aren’t great company.  When it comes to filling in for a husband, they are greatly lacking.  If I spoon my roses in bed at night, snuggling up to them to get some sleep, I will probably spill all over my sheets and have to sleep in a puddle.  Roses won’t make me  feel protected at night when I think I hear noises downstairs.  They won’t listen to me talk about my day or carry on an interesting conversation with me.  Roses aren’t going to keep me from feeling lonely as I celebrate Thanksgiving and my birthday without my husband.

But now that I’ve gotten that little bit of self-pity out, I’m going to stop feeling sorry for myself.  Cause yeah, it sucks to be home alone three weeks, and not have your loved one around to split the wishbone with you or serve your birthday cake.  But it sucks even worse to be out in the woods, learning to live off the land and having to catch and cook your Thanksgiving meal over an open fire (and forget about having turkey or mashed potatoes).  I may not have Justin with me on my birthday (November 28th) but he’s going to be spending HIS birthday (December 11th) in a mock-POW camp learning to resist  coersion techniques- and that’s infinitely worse, in a way that I can’t even begin to comprehend.  So while I feel a little sorry for myself, my sympathy for him is much greater- and I’m going to try and use that as a reality check when I get bummed over the next few weeks.