As good as it gets?

I think it may be right here, in DC.

Sometimes, I think it's kind of like a black hole.  Obviously, I mean black hole in the astro-physics sense. (Not "Black Hole of Calcutta" sense)  So dense, with such a strong gravitational pull, that NOTHING can escape.  The difference being that after a little bit, you don't want to escape.  You've been sucked in.  And you like it.

I came to northern Virginia because this is where my husband's family is.  Every day the high stays below 40, I miss Texas a little bit more.  The irony is that my husband and I are both rolling stones. We both left home fairly young, and planned on living in lots of other places. You know- join the Army, see the world.  So where am I?  20 miles from the house he grew up in. Point being, I wasn't sitting in Central TX pining for NOVA. 

But God has a sense of humor.

It is kind of strange to move to a place where one doesn't really need to make new friends, because friends from previous duty stations all moved here also.  Not bad, just odd. And it is just what happens in DC- a part of normal career progression for a lot of people.

I am not a big fan of the non-stop traffic.  Or the high cost of living. Or the rude people. But, 9 months later, I can see why people get sucked in. I understand why spouses get here and try to dig in their heels, battling the current of the Army, which is trying to drag them back to "real" posts.

Unlike other places I have lived, there are an overwhelming number of locations one can live in.  Figuring out WHERE to look for a house was much harder than finding a house I liked.  There are lots of schools here that are the best in the NATION, not "the best you can do in KISD".  And they are public schools, so military families can actually send their kids (presuming you can find a house in that school zone). 

Some people here work longer than others, but they come home at night. Spouses worry about accidents on the Beltway, not IEDs.  If your soldier gets snagged for a deployment from the Pentagon, most of them are 6 months.  There are people here with no combat patches.  (Can my husband switch into that career field?)

I live 5 miles from a Trader Joe's. Nothing like a little "Two buck Chuck" to help the deployment along. If I want to drive 15 miles, I can have ANYTHING. It's all right here.

I feel the pull. I am slowly getting sucked in. 

#1 is headed toward high school.  Is there anywhere the Army could send us next year where the high school wouldn't be a huge let-down? What about the other kids and their schools?  Not only are there great public elementary schools, but, from my preferred neighborhood, I could throw a rock and hit THREE Catholic schools, ranging from very good to Blue Ribbon. 

It is kind of depressing to see what is possible, knowing that I won't get to keep it.  We will leave, and I will go back to "the Real Army", where there are only 2 towns to live in, and only one school that I would even consider putting my kids in.  It will probably have only 1 Catholic Church, without a school.  I will find and patronize the commissary, the post gym and the CDC.  I will join the wives club and the FRG. I will put on my big-girl pants and drive on.  But I will carry with me a sense of lost opportunity.

It reminds me of window shopping when I was a kid in NYC.  Wandering along the avenues, looking at all the amazing window displays, walking through the stores, taking it all in, knowing it wasn't going to be mine anytime soon.

Ahhh, MDW. You promise so much, but only for a short while.

The last fleeting moments

The last 24 hours of EML.  Is there a way to stretch them out?  To stop these last precious minutes and hours from slipping away? The last 14 days have been fabulous. Thanks to Old Man Winter, the kids didn't even miss much school.  We went down to the aquarium.  We swam at the Great Wolf Lodge.  He got to watch #6 take her first steps.  He built snow forts with the kids in the front yard.

But time is just about up. 

Now I am trying to find a way to keep the feeling of his hug, the look in his eyes, all those things that I will miss most.  I am savoring the lower stress level that results from his mere presence at home.  How do I hold these things?  I am the queen of storage and organization, but nothing that I or the Container Store can dream up will fit the bill.  I'll have to rely on memory. I hope these last months pass quickly, so that I can feel all these things again, instead of simply longing for them.

So, today, I will spend the whole day right next to him- looking at him, hearing his voice, holding his hand.  Tomorrow, I go back to waiting.

In a funk on R&R and I think it's the Army's fault

Just doesn't seem right, you know?

We were at the Great Wolf Lodge here in VA (the one in Grapevine, TX is the best, by far!). Everybody is sliding and swimming, just having a grand old time.  And the third (and last) morning, I wake up in a big, old funk.

Not really sure where it came from.  My husband is HOME for crying out loud. I should be ECSTATIC and completely un-funked. It seems, well, ungrateful.  I can't tease out the actual cause.  I think it is because my head is just so full.  Full of all those military wife and mom things.

We are (okay, mostly me) trying to find a house for when my husband comes back.  I can't even decide on cities, schools, anything. All the options have flaws and we have no idea what will happen to us after the 12 month of school.  How do I account for all those possibilities?  I feel more and more certain that #1 will attend at least 2 high schools. Do I just not mention it to him until it's too late?

Remember how GW Bush said he was "the decider"?  I feel his pain.  I think I am burned out on deciding.  So I am going on strike.  No more decisions will be made for at least 24 hours.

Take that, Army.

my out of sync friends

I have several good friends whose husbands are exactly off-cycle of my husband.  They could have high-fived in the airport in Kuwait as they passed each other by (they didn't, but it's a fun thought).  Some of them lived near me, most didn't.  I love these women, but the deployment overtakes so many aspects of our lives, that it influences our friendships.

When my husband deployed immediately (less than 30 days) after we arrived at Ft Hood, it was rough.  Looking on facebook at pics of friends (and their soldiers!) who left our last duty station and were not immediately deployed was even tougher.  It was a feeling somewhere between envy and feeling like I stepped in dog poop and they didn't.

They are my friends.  I was happy to see them happy.  But there that feeling was. Just sitting there. It would take up residence in some dark crevice of my mind, reappearing in weak, lonely moments.  Family vacation pics, Christmas pics, birthday pics.  Stuff that made me stay closer to my "deployed" friends, who I could call at 9:30pm on a Saturday night because they were watching TV alone also.

These feelings are petty, for sure. No one was trying to rub their husbands' luck at not being currently  deployed in any one's face.  But reason and logic are the first things to go when you haven't slept well in four months because your husband is gone, and you feel like you have to stay up late just in case there is a noise or something.  (Noise-hearing while asleep is my husband's job.  He's good at it.  I am not.  Hence, less sleep.)  At the same time, these were the friends who were not so stressed out and managed to brighten my holiday with Christmas cards, or sent birthday messages, or called to see how I was.  They knew how I felt (being Army wives also), but were in a better place to listen because they weren't in the thick of it.

Off-cycle friends at the same duty station are different too. I hardly ever saw them (unless they lived close by).  Partially because our spouses were in different units, but also because they spent weekends and vacations as a family. Soaking up whatever dwell time they were going to get.  My family linked up with other families missing their soldier, ordering pizza and movies and making margaritas to pass the days more pleasantly.  I swear there was one woman I knew from another place that I didn't see at all until after her husband left. Kind of funny, really.

I treasure my friends whose lives happen to be 180' off mine.  They are great people.  But sometimes I think we remind each other of the painful realities of this life.  I can never be completely content that my husband is home, because my friend is aching with loneliness.  As I celebrate the approach of EML and (eventually) redeployment, another friend (whose husband's unit is quite literally replacing my husband's unit in Afghanistan) is watching the days slip away as her soldier's deployment date approaches. 

I think part of the beauty and strength of the spouse community is this collective waiting.  Even as we greet our soldiers, we have to push away the thoughts of next time.  We are painful reminders to each other, but who doesn't tear up when they see the picture of a friend reuniting with their soldier?

I think this time, after my husband returns, I need to make sure I perform random acts of kindness for my deployed friends. Just little things, so they know they're not alone. After all, one year from now, we'll be in each other's shoes.  And the merry-go-round spins on.

The winter of the deployment

Wow, I was gone a long time.  We travelled for Christmas, to my mom's vacation home where there is no high-speed internet.  Come on now, let's make the dial-up noise together. kuuuuuuuch, beee-ooop, beee-oop....    It's good to be home.

December was a dark month, both literally and emotionally.  It is darker and colder here than in Texas. I was struggling just to hold on and make it to bedtime each day.  I would say a prayer every night that the next day would (surely!) be better, only to be just as beat down the next night and utter the same prayer.

Enter the New Year.

Why does January 2011 seem so very much closer to June 2011?  It is no different from going from November to December.  Why was I positively gleeful when I ripped (literally) the 2010 calendar from the wall and tossed it in the trash with the poopy diapers (which is where it belongs, IMO)?

For some (stupid) reason, a corner has been turned in my mind.  My husband leaves FOB Middleofnowhere to come home for EML in less than 2 weeks.  (Naturally, I don't know exactly which day, but then I could make plans. And where is the fun in that?) I thought EML was 14 days, but I guess it is 15. That extra 24 hours feels huge! We also know that he will have to come home a few weeks (not much, but hey...) early this summer to make the start of the school he'll be attending.  Yay!

MY HUSBAND COMES HOME THIS YEAR!!!!

I know my military spouse brethren understand how much better that sounds than "next year", even though it is just an artificial construct of time.  It is a huge psychological hurdle. And we're over it. Next up- EML (or R&R, whichever you prefer). 

Everyday is still long and exhausting, but I have things to look forward to in the short term that boost my morale. R&R.  Finding a place for us here in VA. Not planning on how to drag me and my peeps (and our stuff) over to KS.

I know many of my friends are facing this new year as I faced the last one- with that pit in my stomach over the looming deployment.  I wish I could hug every single one of you (and pour some wine).  I can't wait til this is over for all of us.