Day +4: Back to work

Today was my first day back to school after the summer vacation. It was really hard to go back to school this morning. My husband's family left yesterday morning and we both felt really crummy. I wanted so much more alone time with Chad.

It just didn't work out that way this week. We did get to have lunch together today, which was really nice. It was nice to be able to sit together at the table and talk without having to take turns feeding the baby or chasing the puppy around.

Tonight was exhausting. We're still trying to get back into a rhythm. He spent the whole day doing his own thing, getting his hunting groove going. But it was hard to come home to laundry soaking wet in the dryer and washer, dirty dishes in the sink, clean dishes stacked three high and mail, bills, dinner, etc.

It was just a long day, and Chad and I are trying to get back into a give and take. He has to feel pretty out of it. He came back from war, being gone a year, and is trying to remember how to do the chores, learn what the baby likes and get ready to go back to work himself.

We both had a lot of adjustments to make. He washed my good clothes in the wrong cycle and temperature, but heated up leftovers and fed the baby while I ran errands and did the dishes. We took turns folding the laundry and watched some tv before I had to carry him to bed. I better go before he gets a crick in his neck. 

Day 43: Mundane

Over the past couple of days, my husband and I haven't had any chance to chat, but have been exchanging emails about a very serious topic, new dishes.

When we got married, I had a nearly complete set of dishes. He had a few odds and ends. I've found that he is very hard on dishes. We're down to three salad bowls that match and have a variety of chipped and broken dishes.

I know it's vanity. We can eat on the hodgepodge of dishes we have, but it would be nice with his family planning on visiting for a welcome home ceremony and for the upcoming holidays to have a set of dishes that match, other than our good china, which we nearly never use.

So I sent him two patterns. Asked him which one do you like? He responded by telling me he spent hours dish shopping and sent me a pattern that I had already nixed. It is ok and close to what I wanted, but the more and more I shopped, the more I thought I might be wanting a bigger change, new colors, curtains, decor, etc.

The more I thought about wanting new decor, the more I realized that maybe we should wait to get a new set of dishes when we move and then can spend the money knowing what decor we have to work with.

He spent hours he should have been sleeping, shopping online for dishes so he could offer an opinion, which is very sweet, but I really just wanted a either or answer. So for those of you wondering how a deployment affects a marriage, even the mundane tasks of buying new dishes and deciding when to shop for a household that might not be yours in ten months is made much more complicated by the military.

I sent him emails Sunday, hoping to shop Monday. Tuesday I got an answer, but got food poisoning from a nearby taco place last night and didn't feel up to much today. So maybe I will feel better and get up and run around tomorrow, but not likely. I have too much to do around the house tomorrow if I can work up the energy to do that instead of play with the baby or ridiculous games on facebook.

I send an email that his misinterprets. He spends hours of time he doesn't have. I then feel badly that he wasted time on something that is important to me, but not really important in the grand scheme of things. I write him an email telling him I didn't need him to do all that and hope he understands that I appreciate his time and effort, but it wasn't worth his time instead of being hurt that I didn't like the dishes he liked.

Even the very basic questions and conversations are tougher. We decided to get another puppy as a gift for my husband who wants a hunting dog. Now, he is pushing getting rid of Maggie our dog of the past two years, just when we're getting her a friend, which she is going to love. He says he is worried that our dog who is a little nervous at times and howls sometimes is going to be a bad influence on his trained dog. I'm not interested in getting rid of Maggie. This new puppy is going to need training and he will learn more quickly from watch Maggie than any other training method. I know because I've done it with other dogs in the past. We had one dog professionally trained and two other dogs who learned from him. But it is hard for him to tell me how he feels and vice versa because we don't want to start an argument or cause hurt feelings.

He lives in the middle of a war zone. We haven't seen each other in months. Arguing over dogs and dishes isn't how we want our last conversation to go, should something terrible happen. We make a point not to argue over email and chat and have done a pretty spectacular job this deployment. It took us a while to learn what not to do, but once we got the hang of it, it was all good. But everything takes longer, is fraught with potential relationship landmines, etc.

Deployment even affects the dishes, the new mattress, the welcome home party, and the dog. The smallest things are harder, no matter how mundane.