Well, this one is a bit out of the order I wanted it in, but with everything going on in the last few days (hence my silence and current backlog of blogs), I am moving this one up to the first post today (first, because I have some catching up to do if I want to hit my goal (which I do)). Continue reading 13 of 25…
In 1994 we found out we were pregnant again. Baby number two was on the way. The biggest difference this time was I was going to have to go through the whole thing. All 9 months of it. Trust me, I looked into being attached to a ship for a few months just to miss it, but apparently the Navy doesn’t just send guys over seas because their wife is pregnant, unless of course they don’t want to go, then you get your one-way ticket FedEx’d to you.
Ok, seriously, I didn’t go looking for a way out of being there for this baby (and if you think I did, you might only be slightly right). Unlike our son, I was going to be there for the whole thing. Watch my wife grow in size (and impatience) and enjoy all the weird quirks that come with what a baby does to a woman. The nesting phase, the morning sickness, the odd food issues, the emotional drama that makes Pretty Little Liars*** seem like a comedy. Yes, I was going to have a front row seat to that roller coaster. Yippee… Continue reading 8 of 25…
February of 94. No more ‘haze gray and underway’. Now, every night I would be home with my family with maybe a night where I had to stay on the base happening once a week or so. Nothing like the last three years of our marriage, or I guess, three-and-a-half if you want to be totally accurate.
No, now I would be home all the time and be able to get to know my family and they would get to know me and it would be wonderful…
Or so you would think. Continue reading 7 of 25…
When we first got married, I was constantly away from home. A day on duty where I had to stay all night; a few days or weeks underway for this op or that work-up; 6 month deployments. You get the picture. At one point, we jokingly sat down and did the math and figured that in the first four years of our marriage we had physically slept in the same bed for less than a year and a half of it.
So, somewhere along that road, we agree to three simple rules that we would make the foundational bedrock of our marriage. Continue reading 6 of 25…
My time in the Navy was coming to an end, and as every true sailor who has ever served, I wanted out. Those guys who never wanted out have a term that we referred to them by:
L.I.F.E.R
If you know what it means, you understand. If you don’t… well, lets just say it’s not the nicest acronym that has ever been used. Just to clue you in, the L stand for ‘lazy’ and it just gets worse from there.
Anyway…
I was due to get out in August and my ship was deploying in July (or somewhere in that time frame). If I timed it right, they would end up leaving me behind and I would process out of the military and head home. Sounded like an awesome plan to me. That is, until I brought it up with my wife.
A fact that I never considered when was that women have this whole comfort and security idea that I think is passed down in their DNA, because the second I started saying I wanted out, she rebutted with all the reasons I should stay in. This lead to some long conversations between us, where I would tell her why I wanted to get out and she would tell me why I should stay in.
Ok, truth be told, she did have some valid reasons. It was a guaranteed paycheck, I couldn’t get fired, medical, dental, it was a job… and the list continued on like that. And although I hated it, my reasons for hating it were the same reasons anyone hates their job. Mainly, they make you work. What’s the deal with that?
I ended up going on the cruise and re-enlisted. Got to do it in the second lock of the Panama Canal too. That was pretty unique. Oh, the Navy also gave me a bonus for staying in, a whopping $14,000. I got half of that upfront and it was going to all go to wiping out the debt that we had accumulated over the last 3 years with a little bit extra left over too.
I never said I was good with money back when we first got married. That was another one of those hard learned lessons.
The bad news, however, was that I would end up making the entire cruise and finish out my sea time around February. That is when I would be eligible to go to shore duty, something that was heavy in the ‘pro’ column when I finally made my decision to stay in.
Shore duty. Saying good-bye to haze gray and underway. Not having to worry about leaving the family for long periods of time. Being home every night.
Little did I know, it was those reasons that were about to send us into some pretty heavy seas.
Again.
Ok, this photo is of my son when he was about four months old, so it is out of chronological order, but... sometimes you just need to post stuff like this. Goose ain't got nothing on this look.
Thoughts from the Front 