Navy

Surprise

4 Comments

So I got a text from my husband the other day that his det was ending early.  Since he had mentioned a few days prior that they were getting so many X’s (completed flight syllabus events) that they might wrap up a day early, I thought that’s what he was talking about and perked up at the thought of getting to see him a day ahead of schedule.  It wasn’t until I got a call that he had made it through airport security and was waiting for his flight that I realized he had meant the det was ending right then and he was on his way home.  Surprise!

Now, our house had suffered the fate of many post-holiday spaces and looked a meteor shower of clutter had rained down upon it.  One of my goals for this det was to whip things back into shape so my husband could come home, marvel briefly at my sparkling organization skills, and promptly dump his boots and sea bag full of laundry on the floor.  I was pleased with my progress — the transformation in our bedroom was particularly notable — but I had expected to have several more days to sort through piles of papers and really make things look finished and together.  Hell, I hadn’t even started on the guest room/office/place we throw everything when we can’t think where else to put it.

I spent the next few hours with, ah, strongly renewed housekeeping motivation.  By the time I was ready to quit so I could catch a few episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, I’m pleased to say that things looked pretty darn good in spite of the Navy’s insistence on sliding my whole cleaning schedule to the left by a few days.  Even though it was one in the morning by the time he walked in the door, my husband was appropriately impressed and appreciative of my efforts.  He even waited a couple days to dump his sea bag all over the floor.

I was, naturally, thrilled to see my husband a little sooner than expected, but it is kind of a bummer that they weren’t able to get in a couple more days of flying out there.  Everyone had been doing so well and knocking out more events in a low-stress, highly efficient sort of way, so it’s a shame they couldn’t squeeze in just a little more before it was decided that the airplanes were needed elsewhere.  Still, it was a nice surprise and I’m not about to complain about the short little getting-our-long-distance-hand-back-in det being even shorter and easier than anticipated.  I am well aware that while this fits in with the general rule of nothing military-related ever turning out precisely as planned, Murphy’s usual SOP is to extend military separations rather than reduce them.  We’re savoring this change of plans as a bit of good fortune — who knows when we’ll be lucky enough to have a surprise as nice as this again?

Cheating on my Blog with a Paper Journal

4 Comments

So, my husband has been away on a training det for about a week, and I haven’t been saying too much about it online.  I have, however, started a project I’ve had tumbling around in my head for a while: each day that my husband is away for whatever reason — whether it’s for a couple days, a couple weeks, or a much longer separation — I am writing in a paper journal.  I haven’t missed a day yet this go ’round, and I like to think I will be able to keep it up throughout this stint apart and on into future dets (some of which will be deployment length, but the COD community is detachment-based rather than having the entire squadron gone at the same time).

There are advantages to having a private place to blather on about my day.  For one thing, I don’t have to be as concerned about OPSEC no-nos like departure dates and countdowns to coming home.  For another, I can write about searingly mundane things like what I had for lunch or who woke me up in the middle of the night with a text message without worrying that I’m boring you, dear Reader, to tears.  (Bonus: it’s a really pretty little book, too, and I’m enough of a stationery dork to get a real thrill out of scribbling in it.)  Of course, I don’t get any sort of sense of community, no give-and-take, no conversation about my personal musings when they are ink-on-paper and thus entrenched firmly in the offline world.  I need both my writing outlets.  Therefore, the following is a snapshot of what is going on in my head these days.

This is the first time in well over a year that my husband has been gone for longer than overnight watch, and I worried that I would find myself off-kilter and out of practice.  After all, I have been blessed to have him by my side nearly 24/7 for far, far longer than we ever thought possible in the Navy.  Of course, the main reason for this surfeit of togetherness was the significant back-up in the C-2 pipeline that was keeping my husband out of the cockpit for a distressingly extended period.  We tried to make the most out of all that time together — time which we are all too aware that other military couples would practically kill to have — but we never had a clue whether he would start the syllabus proper the next day or months hence.  We still couldn’t make any big plans for all that “time off” with such a Sword of Damocles hanging over our heads.

Now that he is definitely, assuredly, without a doubt in the class that is next in line for CQ (Carrier Qualification, or proving that you can land your airplane on that damn Boat scooting around in the middle of the ocean), I think we both feel much better.  We’re well aware that, as with all things Navy, anything could happen to throw a monkey wrench in The Plan, but things are rolling and there’s a light at the end of the FRS tunnel.  He is actually getting to fly on a regular enough basis to see improvement with every event, and he is gaining confidence every day in the aircraft.  I love hearing the excitement in his voice when we talk on the phone.  I can’t wait until I get to see the smile on his face when he strides back into the house — sweaty, smelling of NOMEX and old airplane, and sporting some serious helmet head — after a good flight.  It is as if after a year and a half in hurry-up-and-wait limbo, he remembers who he is and why he has those Wings of Gold on his chest.

Getting readjusted to my husband having a busy schedule and going away isn’t mega-fun, but neither has it been unbearable.  I guess coping with long distance is like riding a bicycle; when you’ve done it before, you can do it again.  Of course, it helps knowing that he’ll be back before too much longer, and I do appreciate being able to get my hand back in on an easy, short det like this one.  There are a few more of this stripe coming up over the next few months, and beyond that, we’ll find out whether we’re staying where we are or PCSing someplace entirely new for the first fleet squadron.  Then we’ll have to be ready for the big leagues whenever that first “real” six month (or more) det pops up.

Betcha we can handle it.

Expiration Date

Leave a comment

I learned something new yesterday.  Did you know that orders actually expire?  I always thought that unless they were specifically designated as temporary, they would just chug merrily along until the next set came down the pipe.

My husband got home from copiloting someone else’s sim event a little later than expected because he got called in to give some information so they could renew his orders to the FRS.  The best part is that the orders were originally written to give a nice big cushion — way more time than should have been needed to complete the activity — so that they don’t have to go through the adminstrivia associated with generating new orders.  We have officially been here about three times as long as the FRS was supposed to take.

With all the wangst that our extended stay has been generating lately, I got a much-needed laugh out of that.

Cobwebs

3 Comments

It’s been so long since I posted here that I feel like I should do the Internet equivalent of shaking out the rugs and dusting the furniture.  (I’ll avoid the vacuum metaphor lest it reinforce how badly I have sucked at being a regular MilSpouseBlogger.)  So, uh… hello.  Nice to type at you again.  Hope you had a nice Halloween, Shemini Atzeret/Simchat Torah, Sukkot, Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, and any other holiday that has passed since I managed to throw up an entry here in Nth-land.  Ours were fairly nice, on the whole.  We even built our own sukkah for the first time this year, as this was the first year we were in town to enjoy having our own yard in which to build the temporary hut for the Feast of Booths.  Our actual “dwelling” in the sukkah for meals was severely curtailed by the bumper crop of mosquitoes; we discovered that being a festive meal is much less joyful than eating a festive meal.  Still, we felt pretty accomplished just for building and decorating the structure, and we did manage to partake of a few tasty beverages within before getting too chewed on by bugs.

On the Navy side of the coin, things are still slo-o-ow on this journey to the first fleet squadron, wherever that might end up being.  However, there is evidence that the pace will be picking up considerably with the arrival of 2010, in the form of a mad dash to get my husband prepared for carrier qualification sometime in March.  Keep in mind that we arrived here in early May… of 2008.  That puts us at nearly a year and a half of being told that things are going to get moving any week now, so stay ready to pick up and move at any time.  On paper it looks like we’ve had a lot of free time, but the fact that my husband has still had to check the flight schedule every evening on the off chance that he might have an event the next day has put a damper on any number of things we might have liked to accomplish.  There are several home improvement projects that we put off starting lest we have to drop them in the middle when the flight training finally picked up.  We could each be well on our way to completing a graduate program.  I could have put more serious effort into looking for a job if I’d known to laugh in the face of the predicted six-month FRS timeframe.  Hell, we could have gotten me knocked up as soon as we moved into our house, experienced the whole pregnancy together, and spent the first seven months of our child’s life with hardly anything to distract our focus from the nugget — er, baby.

On second thought, scratch that last one.  Murphy’s Law would have ensured that the moment we saw the little plus sign on the pregnancy test, my husband would have been rocketed through the syllabus at record speed, sent immediately on his first det, and left me to move to California by myself just before giving birth.  I’m glad we opted for cats instead.

Don’t get me wrong — I love having my husband around so much on a day-to-day basis, but I think we’re both going to be relieved when he is finally able to dive into flying again.  There is very little sadder than a Naval Aviator who is not flying, and I can tell it’s getting to him.  It’s more than mere lack of flight time, though.  He has many friends from his graduating class at the Naval Academy (not in aviation, obviously) who have already completed their first sea tours and several deployments.  My husband wants to get to the point where he is truly serving rather than only training to do so.  I’m proud of him for it, and I understand, but I do feel the need to point out that there is little need to worry that the Navy won’t get its fair return (and then some) on the investment.  I am certain we’ll be looking back wistfully on this relative freedom soon enough, but we ought not let ourselves forget that too much “free time” ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The D-word

5 Comments

A recent post by ENS Wifey got me thinking about something a well-meaning family member said to me when I expressed concern over a central aspect of my husband’s chosen career.  A couple years ago, my father-in-law (retired SWO and all-around awesome guy who has Been There and Done That) mentioned something about deployment, and I quipped that he shouldn’t say that dirty word in polite company.  That brought the conversation to a halt.  He told me I shouldn’t think of it that way, but rather as a good thing, an opportunity for growth, and so on and so forth.

Spoken like someone who has always been the one leaving to Do Things around the globe rather than the one left back at home, right?

I would never try to argue that deployed servicemembers have it “easier” or “better” than their spouses, but I do think a very different kind of dread accompanies the prospect of being the one who must passively wait and worry than the one who is actively involved in the mission du jour.

I know my father-in-law was trying to be encouraging–I do appreciate that–but it’s just a step too far for me to be able to look at the D-word as a good thing. I can manage that it’s not a terrible thing nor the end of the world nor cause to fall apart into a wibbly pile of emotional Jell-o, and even that it might indeed be an opportunity for growth, but I am not going to pretend that I look forward to being separated from my husband for months at a stretch.