Week 32

The heat is broken again and the repair man will be joining me to examine the unit for the third time in two weeks. In addition, my satellite is out, so no T.V. It is not so much the fact that the T.V. is gone that bothers me, but my conversations with Dish Network. They advised me that my satellite may be out due to cloud cover and that I need to wait until a clear day and then call them back. This is asinine. They are implying that there have been no clouds in NC in the past 18 months, since my satellite has never been disrupted before. If clouds indeed caused my T.V. to not work, then I would only be able to watch perhaps three to four times a week, which would cause me to get cable.

Yesterday I took my car in for an oil change. They gave me two new tires and aligned my car. On the way home I noticed that in order to go straight I had to turn left and if I kept the wheel straight I would run off the road. Interesting.

Last night I dug Joe's toothbrush out of the bathroom drawer and I used it. Many people confuse disgusting with intimate. I am one of them.

Week 34

This morning I woke up to white frost covering all outdoor things in a silently glamorous way. This did not persuade me to wear socks however. Lunch was Thai and all the caffeine in the world has not reduced the dull grinding pain in my sinuses. The sun looks over us from afar and it seems this time of year we are an afterthought.

Lately, I have taken note of the various comments I receive when I inform people that my husband is in Iraq and that yes, he will be spending Christmas there.

Responses vary from thanks for his service, acknowledgment of support for the troops, dogmatic affirmations of war and freedom, and prayer offerings. My favorite response came from a woman in Lowe's who simply said, "I'm sorry." My least favorite response was, "You much be use to it by now."

The surprisingly wide range of replies demonstrates the varying opinions on the war and marriage. Some focus on the former and other's the latter. Irregardless, it is interesting from my perspective. Still, after many months I am often left perplexed.

Week 35

I suppose I haven't written in a while because things have been going fairly well the past few days and contentment doesn't exactly inspire me to write. I have been busy at work. I go home and dedicate myself to various tasks like baking and cleaning and organizing.

Joe and I have begun to plan our R & R vacation and have at long last decided on Greece as our destination. Joe's family came to visit this past weekend, bringing with them all the sounds and smells of a full house along with many fabulous gifts. The house seems especially quiet in their absence.

The heater broke down this weekend as did the internet. Crying fixed the internet, but the heat won’t budge. Luckily the fireplace heats the house fairly quickly and the past few days have been mild as I wait for the maintenance man.

The days have been gloomy and one begins to wonder where all of the clouds come from. I watch the calendar as one watches a clock and the days slowly tick by. Nine weeks is half way.

Joe and I are both feeling deployment fatigue. He gets mad, and I wish that I could go into hibernation until August. Things feel slow and still. Even the evergreens seem cold. Winter lacks life.

I feel too tired to be angry. Usually I can muster a bit of anger that we have missed two birthdays, Halloween, football, thanksgiving and now nearly Christmas in just the four months that he has been gone.

After all this is our honeymoon, our first year of marriage and it will all be a do-over. But just as no one can really give you back your first Christmas together, all of the dinners and dishes that would be spent together, every moment of everyday ordinary life can never be recovered. After months of moments and unmade memories slipping away I get tired.

Deck the Halls

So after completing a cost-benefit analysis on which was more depressing, decorating for the holidays for yourself by yourself or completely ignoring Christmas all together, I decided to decorate. If anything else it would give me two more projects to complete: put up and take down. Not that I need anymore projects right now, but anything to help me avoid writing my final paper is a worthwhile task in my eyes.

A glass of wine and the least Christmasy music I could find on the radio accompanied me. One does not realize how much of what one does is for those she loves until she is eating cereal every night for dinner wondering what possessed her to bother decorating for Christmas. Without the people you love around there are few good reasons to do much of anything including make dinner, change the sheets, scrub the toilet etc. etc.

Week 38

I remember the first time Joe came home from war. We had bought our house before he left for Iraq and I hand moved in without him. He stood in the doorway, "should I take off my shoes?"

"I don’t know," I said with a laugh, "it's your house."

Re-acclimation to stateside life has its laughable moments, but generally speaking it’s a time of grounding. Most husbands are at least remotely aware of what type of behavior is expected of them, but after a year (in this case 15 months) away from home, rules and roles change. I loved my husband for gently inquiring about how to proceed.

While home for the next year we devised a fairly evenly distributed division of labor. I assigned tasks and he completed them. I cleaned the house and he did the dishes. I cooked and he ate. I did the laundry and he folded it. At four o-clock in the morning, we both hunted uniform socks down together.

Joe has been gone exactly three and a half months today and I have finally begun to settle into an empty house and a routine of my own. I was perplexed by having to clean gutters out on my own, get cars fixed, and lug garbage. I relish in my independence and mourn my co-dependence simultaneously.

When Joe comes home next year, at least I will know what to expect. I will courteously and gently return some of the household duties to him once he has relaxed and settled in. I will dote on him so that he knows how glad I am to have him home. I will greet him with open ears, an open heart, patience and pineapple upside down cake.

Fear Number 6

I was with another Army wife when I heard the chaotic reporting of the Fort Hood shooting. This, like learning of any systematic and yet completely irrational killing feels like swallowing a giant gumball whole. It makes you choke and it causes great pain as it sinks from the back of your throat down into your lower abdomen.

I know the feeling well. It comes with every helicopter crash when I know Joe is traveling throughout Iraq. It comes with every car bomb in Joe's region and it came the day I was on the phone with him when there was an explosion. While I knew that Joe was safe in Iraq on the day of the Fort Hood shootings, the knowledge of the horror experienced by those families who were at home on that base was enough to render the same sickening feeling I get with the knowledge that there is a possibility that Joe is in danger.

Army families deal with the possibility of death each day, but strangely the immense fear of death associated with deployments somehow diminishes real-life dangers that everyone experiences including car accidents, diseases and apparently now the violent wrath of lunatics as well.

I'm not an advocate of paranoia. I do however mourn the loss of one more space of safety. Whether that space of safety was real or not for military personnel and families is beside the point. Beyond the loss of individual lives, we have collectively lost another space that previously offered freedom from fear and fear number six is the unfortunate and yet universally common thread in the fabric of military life.

I remember the first golf war in vivid snippets. I was in kindergarten. Occasionally I slept in the bathtub for two reasons. The first reason is that because if war was anything like basketball, eventually they were going to be on our side of the court. The second reason was because the bathtub seemed to be a natural place to hide from bombs. That was the first time I lost my freedom from fear. I was in my own house and in my own bathtub.

As an Army wife I believe we are facing two main questions. The first is from the military or governmental perspective and questions how we can create actual safety. The second is as a civilian and questions how we can help ourselves to feel safe or perhaps simply safe-er regardless of the actual level of safety.

Week 39

Today started week 39. I can't remember what month comes in like a Lion, but surely November comes in like a Polar Bear. Thanks to hurricane Ida, North Carolina has been mercilessly bombarded with needle-like rain that comes at you from the side and gusty winds that left me wondering if my steering wheel had become unattached from the rest of my vehicle.

Last night was the Festival of the Trees, which was beautiful albeit responsible for significant cognitive dissonance on my part as the festival of the Turkeys has not yet been celebrated. The early onset of the Christmas holiday has left me feeling apathetic.

I spent last week in Boston visiting colleges with my cousin and staying with a friend from high school. I felt a bit nostalgic parading around college campuses, wondering if I had the best possible undergraduate experience. Could I have gone to a better school? Could I have made more friends? Could I have appreciated my time more? Momentarily throughout the weekend I wished that I could go back and do it all over. Of course, repeating the experience would be of no use unless I could take the lessons learned from the first time around with me, and yet then it losses its wondrous appeal.

Arriving safely back in North Carolina, I was brought to my senses concluding that my college experience was just as good as any. It was filled with apprehension, failed romances, many fake friendships and just two good ones, priority setting and personal growth. I traveled all over the world in college and on the way I learned to trust myself. I would not give up that trust for all the keg parties in the world - as fun as those may have been.

Sweet Home Chicago

The fall came last night. Almost like the mystery brought by a new blanket of snow, this morning brought a breeze of golden glitter through the trees. The sky is grey and is hanging low in the sky and all the memories of pot roasts, pumpkin pies and football warm the spirit as much as the wind cools my cheeks. Fall is for family.

My aunt used to tell me that time would move more quickly with each passing year. I never understood how that could be so, but I believe it to be true. November is upon us.

This year I am spending all of the holidays with my family. My mother is especially excited about this and so am I. There is something special about spending the holidays with your mother, and while it may not be turnips at thanksgiving or the pez dispenser in your Santa stocking there is something about home. For me, it’s the sound of our space-heater igniting with a click click click and a whooosh. It's the sound of our creeky doors slamming and the thud thud thunk of someone running up or down the stairs. It's the creaking of the wooden floorboards, the ticking of the kitchen clock, the drip in the sink and the rattling of the windows. It's the feeling of safety that all of these elements together give you when you are home.

Perhaps by now you've realized that I've spent all of my years in one old turn-of-the-century flat in Chicago. I know it better than I know any other place in the world and though I have lived in New Orleans, Rome and North Carolina, Chicago has always been my home.

We have a reputation for being home bodies, we Midwesterners. I can't say it’s the weather; I've met a patch of ice with my rear-end a few too many times to appreciate the ice and snow. It's certainly not the smell, which is usually troublesome to identify and worse to inhale. I know it’s not the convenience, as inconvenient more aptly describes just about everything in Chicago. And it can't be the politics, humorous as they are. I think it’s more to do with the camaraderie and competition, the pristine gold coast and the poverty, and Chicago's unique ability to suspend its history and its future in the present.

A worry of mine is that my children may never know the sounds of safety and what it means to be home. To me, it’s a gift to travel the world and to find that there's no place like home.

The Real World

Very early Monday morning I returned to the states from a wonderfully fabulous 10-day vacation in the West Indies. I'm happy. It's cold here in North Carolina, a bitter 65 degrees and I resent that. My office was just as I had left it, as was my house. It's strange to think that so many things can change for you, while the rest of the world stays the same. I met lots of people on vacation. Some were from the UK, others from India and New York, which is a world in its own. We all had so many similar experiences and world views. I love the feeling of connectedness with other people who in many ways are very different, but in more ways are just the same.

I now have a headache, stuffy nose and generally feel as if someone has inflated my face. I suppose that's just another benefit of air-travel.

The Time Machine

Stopped at the traffic light in front of the gate, I watched the lights turn from green to yellow to red and then from red to green. The broadcaster on NPR spoke in a monotone voice that created a lulling backdrop to my morning commute. The air was cool and crisp and the sun gazed down upon me, but with a cold shoulder. It was the first day that felt like fall.

Sitting there, I waited perhaps no more than 15 or 20 seconds, but like most of us do at a red light I rushed it. I wanted the light to change, to go-go-go, to get to the next thing, to hurriedly push the accelerator on my Hyundai Accent and to wish it reacted as if it had more than half a cylinder, and then to allow my mind to wander to a time when I might drive a car that actually goes. I realized how much time I spend wishing for time to go by, waiting and wishing for those times when I want time to stop. Ironically, sooner or later it will.

I wished just about every second of the last 15 month deployment by. I cherished the changing of the seasons, semesters and any other marker of the passage of time. I laid in bed at night wishing for the deployment to be over so that I could have my life back. I blamed the president, the terrorists, the Army, and Joe. I never realized that I could have had my life back, had I chosen to live it.

I admit that life is hard to live without Joe or whoever your Joe may be. Sometimes it's downright impossible. But over the months I have learned that it is easier to live than to cry and its less painful to take charge of your life than to let it drag you as the days go by.

During the last deployment I remember telling someone that having Joe gone felt as if my body was being ripped in half. I stand by that, and this time I often wonder why the gaping hole I feel in my chest is not visible in the mirror. I know that without Joe I am not whole, but rather than trying to patch that hole I'm holding it and trying to remember that without feelings of sadness, I wouldn't know what it meant to be happy.

For this reason I have stopped allowing my mind to drag me down the path of life ahead of my time. I've stopped wishing for a time machine.

Lucky Ducky

Sometimes you have a week where lots of good things happen to you and lots of bad things happen to other people. It is usually pretty easy to determine when the bad things happen, but the good things are often interpreted through mood or comparison.

This week, I learned that two people have cancer. The first is the person who married Joe and I. The second is the person who introduced us.

It was hard to swallow both of these realities. No matter what else is going on in your life, when you hear things like that you should realize how good you have it and how lucky you are not to personally experience Fear Number Five (refer to Week 48).

For me, the last deployment served as the "bad thing" that made other aspects of my life look much more rosy - especially once Joe was home. After living a year without Joe, it became blatantly obvious that that was the worst thing that could happen to me. As a result, it became very difficult for me to take Joe for granted when I did have him, as having him was logically the best thing that could happen to me.

Smelly PTs all strewn about? Doesn't matter.

Mazes of treacherous computer cords? Doesn't matter.

This deployment came with my full understanding that Joe and I will get through it just as we did the last one and that as before we would be better for it. Each reunion is a honeymoon, a second chance to begin a new life together and to reaffirm to yourself and your partner that you are where you want to be.

A map of your priorities and a "you are here" sign is the best gift any bad experience can provide.

Week 46

Today I ripped another week off my little stack of numbered post-its and began the 46th week. The weeks count backwards of course, next week I will only have 45 weeks of the deployment left.

The air conditioner at home is broken. As it turns out I think I fell out of bed the other night from tossing and turning because I was overheated. After calling half-a-dozen AC repair shops I came to the sad conclusion that they all charge you way too much to basically do nothing more than show up at your house. Molestation in its purest form.

Last night I went to a spa party, which my husband was more informed about than I. He explained to me, "they put stuff on you and then you buy it." That's pretty much what happened. I admit that my face does feel like a baby bum, but who is to say which of the 50 zillion products I tried made it feel that way?

As someone who generally washes her face in dish soap, or whatever is sitting on the counter at the moment (yes, even Ajax), I was rather perturbed that facial cleaning products could cost a small fortune. I resigned to accept my fate, by convincing myself that I had at least saved several thousand dollars over the past 26 years of my life by cleansing with dollar-store dish soap and if I was to avoid having my joules jiggle below my lack-luster lips by age 30, I'd better suck it up.

Happy Birthday

This past weekend was my birthday and I went home to spend the special day with my family. After a one and a half hours drive to the airport, a two hour flight and another drive to my family's home, exhaustion set in. I didn't realize how not well I had been sleeping until I was safe in my mother's house. I slept like a rock.

I had good laughs with my family, we cooked out for my birthday dinner, then roasted marsh-mellows over the fire. All wrapped up in a blanket sitting in front of the fire, the only thing missing was my husband.

I got back to NC bright an early Monday morning with enough time to drive an hour and a half to work and be late. Exhausted I struggled through the day only to come home to a messy house and a broken air conditioner.

Then, last night I fell out of bed. Even as an infant, I have never fallen out of bed. What in the world?

Meet Me in My Dreams

My husband has been getting up at the crack of sandy dawn in Iraq to call me, so that I can talk to him before I go to bed. This time usually works well for us because we can both focus on our conversation without being interrupted. It's hard, however, for me to get off of the phone with him knowing that it will be many months before I see him again. It's difficult to say goodbye.

My husband can always tell when I am upset or crying, even when I do my best to hide it so as not to make him feel bad or worry.

Many times before we say goodnight, we choose a rendezvous point at which to meet each other in our dreams. Last night we choose to meet on the second deck of the Eiffel tower for a glass of champagne. I wore my white sundress and the late summer night weather was perfect, and the lights of Paris magnificent.

I love playing this game with my husband. It's much easier to get off the phone with someone by saying that you will see them in Paris, than not. But I still find it pitiful that I have to resort to my unpredictable dreams to get a moment with my own husband.

Fear Number Three

Usually my fears are irrational. I lay in bed at night trying to convince myself that I am totally insane and should spend less time worry about nonsense. Unfortunately, one of my deployment fears was realized sooner than expected.

Being the fabulous albeit part-time homemaker that I am, I decided to finish landscaping the front garden with some lovely mulch - Fifteen bags of mulch to be exact.

I arrive at Lowes and happily load up my cart. After all, I had gotten an early start to my day. A nice older gentleman offered to help me pull my overflowing cart to the checkout and then, as good Lowes employees do, offered to help me load my car.

How could I turn down an offer like that?

Good customer service turned bad, when the man not only loaded my car, but locked and closed my door as well. My car is of the particular automatic type where locking one door locks all of them. And yes, as I was hauling large amounts of wood chips from my cart to my backseat - my purse was conveniently stored in the front seat of the car - as were my car keys.

It felt as though it was happening in slow motion. I stood there in awe. Seriously. Did that just happen?

So here I am, smelly as can be after working in the yard all morning and foregoing a shower, stranded in the Lowes parking lot with a remorseful old man and not even a dollar for a bottle of water.

I'm pissed. But I am also at the mercy of the Lowes employee at this point. I try to curb the attitude, unsuccessfully at first, when he announced to his fellow employees that I had locked myself out of my car. I had to protect my honor and even if I didn't, my mouth gets the best of me and I spouted out, "No - you locked me out of my car." Clearly he had never tangoed with a smelly blonde wearing over sized Army PT shorts, pink flip-flops and yesterdays make-up.

I pull the sob story: "Well I would call my husband, but he is deployed to Iraq - FOR A YEAR!" Go ahead wallow in it.

Since that did nothing to improve my spirits and surely sunk the Lowes man's, I turned a new leaf. The Lowes man showed me to a rocking bench displayed at the font of the store. He even brought me green tea. And there I sat and sat and sat for nearly two hours waiting for car-pros to come and financially abuse me.

As it turned out, Lowes employees are required to take a one hour mid-shift break. I met all of the Lowes smokers and made some new friends. I even got a suntan on my pasty looking legs.

But most importantly I confronted fear number three. I was stranded without a friend of family member in flying distance to rescue me and I lived to blog about it.

Week 48

The Army is a bastard. I think I can say that because I am married to it. I just began my second deployment. I deployed to the-middle-of-no-where North Carolina and my husband deployed to Iraq. Looking on the bright side, this deployment is only 12 months long, whereas the last one was 15.

I don't live on post and I don't have any children. I do have a great job, a long commute and reality TV to keep me warm at night.

Last week, while at the dentist having my teeth cleaned, my hygenist engaged me in a lengthy and emotional conversation about Army-Wifedom. She too was (oh the horror) childless in her mid twenties, and employed. Neither of us lived in military housing nor were able to attend the many support events provided for left behind family members, as most of these occur during working hours. We laughed about our fears and important lessons learned and she said to me, "you will be just fine, you're one tough cookie."

I encounter more of us each day. We are independent women, far from our families, working and struggling to find meaning in a world that, with marriage on hiatus, often seems to be without center and without purpose.

Over the next 11 months of this deployment I will continue to search for meaning in my own life and newfound independence and I will let you know what I find.


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One of the hardest things about beginning a deployment is fear of the unknown. My top ten deployment fears are as follows:

1.) I am deeply afraid of the chain-saw massacre man who I am quite certain is living in the woods behind my house

2.) I fear dead zones, do to which I may miss a call from my husband

3.) I am scared of flat-tires, dead battaries and any other type of obscure car trouble that could leave me stranded

4.) Cockroaches - enough said.

5.) I fear sickness. Me, my husband, our families, our pets. Dealing with this alone has and can be a total nightmare.

6.) Death. I think that anyone who has a loved one in harms way day-in and out has this fear. Family members of police officers to firemen/women to service people face this fear each day. It is my greatest, most gut-wrenching fear and therefore it consitutes numbers 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 of my deployment fears.