Day 231: Getting along

One of the many issues that complicate life for the military couple is how to communicate when separated. My husband and I have gotten much better at it. He has taught me to relax more. I (yes, MiL, I used to be worse) have learned to let things go. For example, someone opened a fraudulent credit card in my husband's name years ago. The creditors won't talk to me because they say my JAG created POA (power of attorney) isn't valid. In the past, I would have panicked and raced around to get this taken care of. Now, I realize that I've done what I can, if they don't want to work with me, then they can wait until he comes home. And I've learned that realistically, if worst comes to worst, they might put a negative note in his credit report, but there is a statute of limitations on how long something can be held against you, so whatever. If I find time to take care of it, great, but I refuse to stress about it or drive him crazy trying to deal from over there.

One thing we haven't mastered is how not to get so far into our own heads that we forget to bring along our partner. I have been spending this entire deployment scraping our money together so that we can be completely debt free and have a good savings account when he comes home. I have been doing this in the hopes that I can stay home with my daughter for a few years at least. Soon enough she will be in the hands of who knows whom and we will have to deal with both negative and positive learning experiences, but I really want her to love reading and learning from the beginning. I know I can provide her with that environment or at least do a better job than daycare teachers of whom some are barely out of high school and pretty uneducated. (Private RANT here - if we paid TEACHERS from 0-college what giving a child a good background is worth, we would draw and keep more people in the field) Even in our private school/daycare, signs are misspelled, rules are enforced that are not in the best interest of the children, the menu is full of white potatoes, simple carbohydrates, etc.  I just hate that I could be giving her a much more loving, educational environment here at home. Just two weeks at home and she is crawling better, pulling up to stand, kneeling, talking more and in general just making a lot of major leaps. I can see that my staying home would give her a significant advantage in the future.

My husband has been crafting a different future with different priorities. He doesn't want to be broke. If I stay home, we're going to be struggling unless I find something I can do from home, but I think living lean a few years is worth it. I thought we were on the same page until he emails me about buying a house. I got stuck in my mortgage in Illinois when we were first married. It was a constant source of worry and concern. I never knew if I was going to get a payment each month from my renter or if something would happen to the house and I would have to fix it, from several states away. I lost money on the house. I did get a tax break on my mortgage each year, but essentially I had a big headache, several second mortgages and refi's to remodel the 150 year old house and walked away pretty much even, except for the loss of the six months or so of rent my renter skipped out on and the headaches of worry over the bills. I don't want to buy again until we are sure we're settling for a long stretch.

The likelihood of us staying here permanently is slim. We are most likely going to be moving in a 1 1/2  years or so for my husband's career progression. We may come back here, but who knows. We would have to house shop and move into somewhere new only to PCS in 6-12 months? And in this market, while we could possibly afford more home than we used to for the same price and my current income would count toward purchasing, I am afraid if we move that we'd end up with two payments on one income. I was very lucky and had this job before we moved. I may not be so lucky in our next PCS. Getting stuck with two payments on one income could make us homeless very quickly.

The tax breaks for mortgages are good. Owning a home is a good investment. The sooner we start paying on a mortgage, the sooner it is paid off. Renting is temporary and your payments are just paying off someone else's investment. Chad has some good points. The hard part here is that we both do. As reasonable adults, trying to plan for a happy future together, we both have valid points of view, and both views have downsides. We're older for new parents and my taking time off of work to be Lil Bit's teacher, would cut into any retirement or college fund plans significantly. This is one of those things that it is hard not to argue about.

We used to send gigantic emails back and forth, and ended up angry, hurt, frustrated. Mostly because you can't read the tone of voice in an email and you can't explain something that might have been misinterpreted. I don't know what we will decide. I don't know how we will handle not agreeing. I do know that not being able to talk it out, discuss it in person or even by phone is really hard. It is one of the trickiest parts to being separated. We kind of have to let an issue sit for awhile, until we get a chance to discuss it over the phone. That takes a lot of maturity to have something that really matters to you and be able to set it aside.

We've managed to make it through this deployment only having one disagreement so far and it was minor a few weeks into his absence. We quickly realized we needed to find a way to talk to each other and we solved it, but nothing has really come up. I guess we'll have to wait to see what we do. As long as we act like we love each other and are a team rather than opposing entities, we should get along just fine.

Day 296: Restore the Sanity

All over the country this weekend, rallies were held surrounding the theme of restoring the sanity. The general idea is that Republican or Democrat, we all want what is best for our country even if we disagree about how to go about it or what it even is. Restoring the sanity is all about agreeable discord, being able to agree to disagree, being able to debate reasonable issues without animosity.

So why does it seem like adults can't do this in our regular life. As a teacher on a campus that practices a variant of team teaching, I am called to compromise with four other teachers, all of whom are at least 10 years younger than I am. They are good, talented teachers, but we come from different eras, different standards. I don't even want to think about how much education has declined in the past two decades, but considering that I graduated high school before my current students were born, I have seen a lot of changes. I am asked to compromise with people who have seen more than a decade less of education and life than I have and sometimes people who have seen twice as much.

Where is the line between someone newer who sees a better way to do or teach something and lowering standards and cutting corners? Where is the line between some old fuddy duddy who refuses to change her curriculum for anything because it is what she has always taught and holding firm to ideas and ideals that have served her well? And where is the line between holding intelligent discourse and arguing. Do we as a nation even know where that line is? Our entire nation was founded on the idea that two or more groups arguing from various vantage points would find their way into a middle truth.

So why is it so hard to talk to each other like adults. I sat in a meeting today where two people made obvious emails back and forth every time I said something. Because I disagreed with a way they wanted to teach something, I am subject to eye rolling and sneaky emails. One of my new friends told me the other day that maybe we never grow past high school. We are just better at hiding our catty, petty selves.

I don't know if that is true, but it saddens me. I try to be better than that. People often take things I say the wrong way, but if given an opportunity, I will gladly sit and discuss something and try to clear the air.  In fact I tried to clear the air with someone and now it is more muddled than ever. It makes me sad, but makes me so thankful for Chad who loves me for who I am, who gives me the benefit of the doubt and is willing to talk to me if we disagree. Even when emotions run high, maturity is being able to still treat others the way I want to be treated.

We need to restore sanity to the way we deal and treat each other as often as we can. If everyone made a conscious effort to be more tolerant and kind, maybe it would spread. We can only hope.