Military

MilSpouse Friday Fill-In #30

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What is your favorite MilSpouse blog (not including Wife of a Sailor who we all love, or your own)? –submitted by Our Crazy Life

Now, now, it’s not nice to play favorites. 😉 I’ll give what might be perceived as a cop-out answer and say SpouseBUZZ is pretty cool because of the variety of viewpoints it offers. SpouseBUZZ was one of the very first milspouse blogs I added to my RSS reader several years ago, back before I kept my own milspouse blog or really sought out others’.

What are your favorite perks about your s/o being deployed (we all know there are perks)? —submitted by Ramblings of a Marine Wife

One thing I have savored is not having to live my life by the flight schedule. We have no idea what my husband will be doing the next day until the flight schedule goes out the evening before. Until that point, we don’t know if we’re looking at an oh-dark-thirty wake-up for an early brief or if he’ll overshoot a reasonable dinnertime by hours due to a night bounce (Field Carrier Landing Practice, or FCLP) session. My hours are much more regular when Sampson is away; I imagine it will be a bit of an adjustment to get used to planning around the flight sked again when he returns home.

How long did you date your <significant other> before getting engaged? Married? –submitted by Utterly Chaotic

We had been dating for about four and two-thirds years when Sampson proposed. We initially thought our engagement would be about a year and a half long, but due to the exigencies of flight school, we wound up getting married just a few days shy of one year after he proposed.

What do you think your <significant other> would do if s/he wasn’t in the military? –submitted by Adventures of M-Squared

We’ve talked about this “parallel universe” scenario from time to time. I think we would find ourselves living close to our Northern Virginia roots while Sampson worked as an aerospace engineer for one of the big government contractors. It’s possible that I would be working for the same one as a software engineer.

I think one of the main things that kept Sampson from going that route was the knowledge that if he didn’t even try to make his childhood dream of being a Naval Aviator a reality, he would live the rest of his life wondering what might have been. The fact of the matter is that one can pursue a career in engineering after a career as a military pilot, but the reverse is not true. Some things must be done in youth or not at all.

If you could talk to the Secretary of (fill in your appropriate branch) what is one suggestion you would like to bring to their attention in order to improve the lives of military families? —submitted by My Life as His (Air Force) Wife

I don’t know about the lives of military families in general, but it would set this Navy family’s collective mind at ease to have confidence that those in the upper echelons understand the difference between sustainable, well-supported efforts and temporary, extraordinary measures to get the job done in a pinch. None of us can function interminably at “in a pinch” levels.

Are you a military spouse/fiancée/fiancé/girlfriend/boyfriend? Hie thee to ENS Wifey’s blog, snag the questions, and add yourself to the Mr. Linky for this week’s MilSpouse Friday Fill-In!

Cute Paper Motivates Me

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Fellow aviation bride NavyGirl of Marrying the Navy recently held a Reader Recipe Giveaway. I submitted my recipe (Lentils with Spinach and Goat Cheese) largely for the fun of writing up one of our household staple meals, but the random-drawing Force must have been with me: I won! (I only wish my admittedly healthy recipe had been as drool-worthy as the cookies NavyGirl featured after the announcement.)

"What to Eat" meal planning notepad

The turtle wonders what delectable delights will fill the tantalizing blanks.

Sampson and I have never, perhaps, been as good as we could be about planning our meals in advance. When we did, though, it was always a pleasant surprise how much of a stress-reliever it was to have answers to “the eternal question” (as the adorable notepad puts it at the bottom of each page) written down right in front of us. Our grocery runs were smoother, we avoided situations where we needed to dash out at the last minute to get some missing ingredient, and we didn’t wind up eating out when we hadn’t already planned to do so.

And then stuff would come up, and we’d get distracted, and we’d forget to sit down and plan out our meals ahead of time. The same old rut welcomed us back: “What’s for dinner?” “I dunno. What do we have?” “I dunno. Wanna go to Chipotle?”

It’s been even worse since Sampson deployed. I haven’t gone out to eat, which is good, but neither have I been motivated to cook just for myself and wind up with piles of leftovers. I’m kinda lukewarm about leftovers; I get bored with the same dish reheated, and with the household’s King of Leftover Demolition currently halfway around the world, leftovers can hang out in my fridge for a long time. Unless I come up with clever ways to transform those boring remnants of a previously exciting meal into something new and different, they probably won’t get eaten.

That’s where mapping out my culinary week is going to come in really handy: figuring out how I am going to utilize leftovers from one meal in future recipes throughout the week. If I plan out my “transformations” ahead of time, I can space out my leftovers so that roasting a chicken and making rice pilaf for myself doesn’t mean a week-long dinnertime death march until it’s all gone (read: when I can’t stomach another bite of microwaved chicken and rice, it languishes in the fridge until I eventually throw it out). A far better scenario is likely when I know before I roast the chicken that I will use the leftover breast meat for chicken salad one day and soak the remaining dark meat in a soy-sesame marinade to go in fried rice made from the leftover pilaf on another.

Less wasted food, more motivation to cook, and I get to indulge my stationery nerdiness by writing it all out on a hip notepad? Thanks so much for a prize imbued with several different kinds of win, NavyGirl! I strongly suspect that many recipes from her other readers will wind up jotted on the notepad in the coming months.

MilSpouse Friday Fill-In #29

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Since most if the country has had nasty weather, what has your weather been like this week?

It’s been all over the place: rain, sun, wind, highs in the 30s, highs in the 70s… you name it (no snow here, though). Usually it’s March that can’t make up its mind; I guess late January and early February wanted to get in on the indecisive action.

What is/are your best money saving tip(s)?

If you need it, buy it. If you want it, think about it for a while before you buy it.

Aside from that, one of the best ways to save money is not to take up flying. All it takes is airspeed and money…

What was your favorite vehicle you’ve ever owned?

I have fond memories of my bike when I was a kid. It represented freedom of the neighborhood in the form of a purple frame and two wheels. The day I learned how to use the gears to make it easier to go up hills was a good one, but the best days were the ones in summertime that began with me coasting down the hill to the bottom of our street, skidding to a stop in my friend’s driveway, and running to the door with my helmet still on to see if she could come out and play.

What is a question you’d like to see asked in a future fill-in?

Imagine a block of time has opened up in your busy day for you to take a class in anything you like. What subject would you choose?

Fill in the blank: You might be a MilSpouse if….

…you still find colorful little moving tags on various pieces of furniture even though it’s been two years since you PCSed. Bonus points if there are multiple tags stuck atop one another.

Are you a military spouse/fiancée/fiancé/girlfriend/boyfriend? Hie thee to ENS Wifey’s blog, snag the questions, and add yourself to the Mr. Linky for this week’s MilSpouse Friday Fill-In!

Supplies Party

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In the days before Sampson* departed for this deployment, I was at a bit of a loss as to what I was supposed to do to get myself ready. Oh, we had already taken care of the concrete stuff: my military ID was renewed, the base stickers on my car were updated, we had our powers of attorney and all that good stuff. Sampson was busy at work right up until the day he left, so I had a lot of time on my hands at home with the departure date hanging over my head and not a lot of substance I could do to prepare myself.

One thing I did find to do was make a phone call to the United States Postal Service and request a military care package kit. I hate talking on the phone with strangers, so it took some mental wherewithal to get myself psyched up for waiting on hold until I reached a person, but I am very glad I did. The request was easy to make, and the kind lady with whom I spoke assured me the assortment of boxes and other shipping supplies would arrive in a couple weeks.

It felt good to do something — even a small something — to make me feel I was in control of at least one aspect of the upcoming deployment. I might not have known much, but darn it, I knew for sure how I was going to deal with putting packages together for my husband! Bonus, I got to look forward to the arrival of the kit on my doorstep, which got me looking past the looming goodbye.

Cat and carboard boxes

Vera is ready to assist, if by "assist" we mean "hinder in any way possible, up to and including getting cat hair stuck on every bit of tape."

It really is a comprehensive kit: assorted Priority Mail flat-rate boxes, address labels, customs forms, the little plastic sleeves for said customs forms, and even a little roll of Priority Mail tape to tie everything together. Everything arrived on my doorstep, neatly wrapped and at no cost to me. Of course, I will still need to pay postage to actually mail the packages, which is no doubt a big part of why the USPS is so happy to give us the kits gratis.

If you are a family member or friend of someone in the military, call up 1-800-610-8734 and ask for the Military Care Kit. All you have to do afterward is dream up wonderful things with which to fill those boxes before you mail them off to make your servicemember’s day.

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* Sampson: I finally bestowed upon my husband a bloggish alias, so I need not awkwardly refer to him as “my husband” every time I mention the guy.

BUZZing With Anticipation

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Well, the announcement has been made and my first post published, so I suppose it’s time to let you all know about the exciting project on which I have embarked.

SpouseBUZZ

I am a newly-minted SpouseBUZZ contributor! I have been a reader of this “virtual destination where spouses click, connect and share their experiences” since its early days, when I was engaged to my handsome Student Naval Aviator and looking for anything and everything to get me up to speed on the unfamiliar milspouse terrain ahead. Being able to read posts by authors from all walks of military life opened my eyes to the nigh-infinite variety of the military spouse experience. I credit SpouseBUZZ with giving me a wider perspective through its small slices of life married to each branch of the service and in every conceivable combination of Active Duty, Guard, and Reserve.

And now I get to share my perspective on All Things Milspouse from the vantage point of a gal whose husband wears fireproof pajamas to work. I’m humbled and excited, not to mention a wee bit nervous. With the opportunity to have a discussion with a smart, involved community like that of SpouseBUZZ comes the possibility of making a complete ass of myself in front of those same smart, involved people, if I’m not careful. Luckily for me, it’s also a warm and welcoming group of readers, and I can’t wait to get to know them better.

Please stop by and visit, and do let me know what you think of my first post, in which I admit to the whole world that I was a total doofus when it came to navigating certain interactions with a fellow military sweetheart. Fun stuff, right?