Day 6

First, I'm not going to post every day about the deployment.  That would just be stupid.  However, as things come to mind I will post about what I'm going through with it.

So my hubby has now been gone 6 days.  In 6 days, I've cleaned more ferret poop than one should have to, had coffee with the ladies, have half my plans fall through, and then last night, the Xbox died!  As for good news, I've got 2 calls from him already.  The calls make my day/night when I get them.  B's safe and hot and I believe tired as well.  When he's on the phone he's more concerned that I'm ok and that things are being taken care of and I have plenty of money.  Ironically, it was right after his last call (last night) that the Xbox died.  I'm pretty sure that if it weren't for his call, I would have cried like a little baby over it.

Now, I'm starting to feel bad for saying I was going to be in Texas at a certain time and now it looks like I won't be able to go for quite some time.  I have some people pissed, others disappointed, and most understanding.  I'm sorry but bills come first and my car.  If my car doesn't work, then I can't do anything at all.  I feel bad because not only was I excited to see everyone and take the ferrets on a trip, but also because others got really excited to see me.  Ugh... What I find really irritating is the people that are pissed off aren't willing to understand that I don't have the funds and help out or if they do want to help out it's on the condition that I find someone to watch my ferrets for the duration of the trip.  I'm sorry, the ferrets are comin with me.  Would you leave your kids for a trip like that? No, you wouldn't.

Overall, emotionally, I'm doing alright.  I have my occasional upsets, but who wouldn't in this situation.  I have a pretty wide support network established both online and in the "real world".  I love how so many military wives will join together to support each other through the deployments, training, and other hardships that come our way in this life.  Not to say that civilian spouses have it easy, but the military life has its own set of issues.  I think the deployments are pretty much the worst of it though.  I can deal with training, it's usually only for a couple weeks (now that BCT & AIT are done) and the training doesn't have them in a war zone.  It's the deployment, where you go days without hearing from them, not knowing if they're safe or not, that are the hardest.

And I'd like to note some deployment etiquette for all my civilian friends out there.  Here is some things to say and not to say to a friend who's spouse or significant other is deployed or overseas:

First don't ask "are you ok?" Instead ask them how they are doing.  Obviously, they are not completely ok, but they are not sick or anything like that.  We have our rough days and our good days and asking us if we're ok can sometimes make a good day go bad.  It sounds weird, I know, but really, asking if I'm ok is just going to piss me off.  I'm not ok, I'm fine.  I won't be ok until my husband is back in my arms, but I'm fine with life and things.  I'm getting by.

Second, try your best not to whine about your SO being gone for a couple days.  Your friend with a deployed spouse will want to slap you.  Your spouse will be home shortly and is most likely even in the same country as you.  You can text and email as much as you like, but your friend's spouse goes through blackouts of internet and phone due to missions or for security reasons, and in the worse case scenarios, there has been an incident.

Third, if you hear a rumor about your friend's soldier, don't spread it.  This is the leading cause of misinformation out there.  If you see a news piece about what you think is your friend's spouse, wait until you hear something from them.  The media by law has to wait 48 hrs to publish any story about incidents and so the information you saw on the news may not be the most accurate.  If you have concerns about a news piece you saw, ask your friend if they have any news of the soldier instead of going on about what you saw in the news.  Your friend will be the first person to know anything.

I think that covers everything for now.  As things are brought to my attention I will let you know.  I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend.  And as always, keep all of our troops and their spouses, girlfriends/boyfriends, fiancé/fiancées, and their families in your prayers and thoughts.