How quickly we forget

Jane at Taingamala (a fellow Alpha Gam!) just posted about going on a business trip after her hubby returned from deployment. It really it home with me because Mac has been gone for the past three weeks. The year that Mac was deployed, I adjusted to being alone. I created routines that helped me deal with sometimes crippling loneliness and depression (these may or may not have included drinking a bottle of wine in less than an hour).

www.cafepress.com

Per Army regulations, units returning from a year-long deployment cannot conduct overnight training for the first six months they’re back. That six month deadline passed during our honeymoon, so Mac’s battery began preparing for a large field training problem for August (like consecutive weeks and weekends spent in the field and not at home). About a month ago, Mac was picked to lead a three-week long training mission at Fort Stewart in Georgia.

Suddenly, our nice homey life had been overturned. You would think that having endured a deployment, three weeks would be nothing. Not so! Maybe it’s because I changed jobs or maybe it’s because these past seven months have been the most time we’ve EVER spent together, but this training mission has really sucked.



This is terrible advice. We’d all be fat and emotional.

All is not lost. Mac will be home tomorrow (or possibly Thursday), and we’ll have a long weekend to lay about the house and watch football. I’m more fortunate than several of my friends who see their husbands deploy several times a year (granted, they’re only gone for a few months at a time). Mac also isn’t in the same kind of physical danger that existed in Afghan-land.

I’ll stop complaining now.