{continued from last month}
5 things on a 10 things post? Not cool.
Sorry.
I had a complete list of 10 things back in April but you see, I didn’t want to spoil a few surprises for a certain hunky Viper Pilot. Plus, I had a feeling life would be incredibly out of control around the 10th of May (which it is) and I didn’t want to stress over what this month’s list would be about. Not that I ever stress about the blog. You guys are awesome.
Thank you friends, for being patient with me and giving me some breathing room over here in my little corner of the blog world. And thank you so much for your emails! I have a couple of reader requests on the back burner, but I’ll get to them, I promise. I used to write a lot more frequently and I hope to get back to that soon, but life is keeping me spread pretty thin right now. It’s not a bad thing, I’m just taking my time getting settled into a routine. Which brings me to that ever-so-exciting {or not} topic of deployment.
The rest of the list:
6. Plan surprises.
As much fun as it would be to pop out of a giant cake to surprise your spouse when they are deployed just to say hi, it’s not possible. You can’t do that nor do you probably want to depending on their location. I’ve spent several hours pondering the little things I can do to help bring a smile to his face while he is away and though I’ve come up with several, I’m going to share with you my favorite.
It is common to hang a flag or tie a yellow ribbon around a tree trunk to symbolize and honor a deployed service member. It wouldn’t be very respectful of me to do that in Germany, so I had to find another way to show my support.
I made a deployment wreath in Alex’s honor to hang in the house and offered to make one for family and a few friends, thinking the craft would be a good distraction while he was TDY and in the first few weeks of the deployment. Within the first week, I had nearly 100 wreath requests. I was floored and overwhelmed by the outpouring of support! I set to work, made up a bunch of wreaths (I stored them in a storage room behind a closed door with a note that said, “No Viper Pilots allowed” when he was home) and shipped them out all over the country to family, friends, veterans, and even an entire fire department!
Since a lot of people had asked me for his address so they could write to him, I sent a note card along with the wreath for recipients to write to Alex, and I asked them to include any juicy gossip, pictures or news clippings. I know that when I get a piece of mail that isn’t junk or a bill, I do a happy dance. Care packages are great, but a handwritten note can go a long way.
7. Pictures
The moment a house becomes “our” house is when the pictures go up. Some are older, some are more recent. Each one frames a special memory or emotion. I love photography, but what good are pictures if they remain stored on your computer for years and years? If you were to walk through our house, you would find pictures of us from our first date eight years ago, some from our college days, of our families at various holidays and events in our lives, and several scenic shots from places that we’ve lived and visited.
The container or tent that a deployed service member calls “home” for the next few months or year doesn’t exactly have that home-y factor built in. Nor is there a whole lot of space to make it homier. There might be a wardrobe, a cot/bed, and room for a 3-drawer plastic storage container that serves dual purpose as a nightstand. Lest we forget the roommate(s) and their things. But wait! What about space for pictures to hang on the wall?! Maybe just a stand-up frame for the nightstand?
Enter: the digital picture frame. I bet a military spouse invented this little contraption. These little frames can hold a ridiculous number of jpegs and will flip through them like a slideshow. They have a power source, but getting one that is also battery powered is a good idea, just in case. Wanna make it even better? Some are wifi capable, or can be made so, and you can upload pictures to the frame in your spouse’s room miles away! The Viper Pilot’s has its own email address so when I want to add a picture, I just email it right to the frame and wha-bam. There’s the picture.
8. Deployment Survival Guide
Be prepared for the first monthly financial management day. It sneaks up on you and regardless of who handles the finances in your marriage/family, make sure that you know exactly what needs to be done each month. Living in Europe, we have some bills that need to be taken out of our European bank account. Our money has to be shuffled around to ensure sufficient funds at all times. It’s actually more complicated than just paying a monthly water bill. There’s electricity, water, cell phones, home phone, internet, rent…and it all happens at different times and in various methods (direct withdrawal, paid in cash, etc.) so it’s really tough to keep track of it all. The Viper Pilot wrote up “Emily’s Deployment Survival Guide” for our finances. It is a checklist of what needs to be done and when. It has saved me several times when I reach that point where I think I’m done with everything but something tells me I forgot something (I hate that feeling)…I can check the survival guide and rest assured.
We also went around the house/garage and I videoed him showing me how to turn on and off the furnace, the water heater, and the main water supply, how to check fluids in the cars, how to charge the car batteries if when they die, how to start/run the lawnmower, where the spare keys are hidden, and so forth. It sounds a little silly, but by the time he showed me that the Volkswagen’s battery lives under the driver seat and the Volvo’s is in the trunk, followed by a demonstration of two-cycle versus regular gas, I couldn’t remember if I was supposed to turn off the main water supply before using the lawn mower to put the spare gas can under the backseat of the Volvo or not…
Some are the kinds of things I will need to know about now and others I may not find useful right away — they will probably come in handy at a much later date. But when he showed me everything in a matter of 20-30 minutes, I was bombarded with information and guaranteed to forget it all within minutes. The videos have proven useful several times already. And I may or may not watch one of them just for fun to see him teasing me about the time I accidentally put two-cycle gas in the lawn mower a few years ago. I miss his smile. 🙂
9. Dropboxcontainer
Dropbox is a fantastic free service that allows you to store files and access them from anywhere so long as internet access if available. You can create a Dropbox folder on your computer and share it with someone else. Any files you put into that shared folder, the other person can access. Any files they share in the folder, you can access. This is great for the check registers (if you keep them in Excel spreadsheets like we do), pictures, videos, and whatever else. Most locations that your service member will deploy to have internet access. I said most.
10. Wear a charm.
The day he left, I wore my F-16 necklace.
And I haven’t taken it off since. Not once. Sometimes I hold it and say my simple little prayer, “Lord, protect my husband.” This Etsy search will give you tons of deployment jewelry options but if you’re a fellow F-16 spouse, you can get the one I have here. I’m also kind of a fan of this bracelet.
BONUS. At some point, stop.
This is happening. The awful moment when you drop him off and it’s time to say goodbye is going to happen, like it or not. The tears are going to fall and you will do the donkey sob. There is nothing you can do about the fact that you have to let him leave. You don’t have a choice.
Stop the hustle and bustle of packing, creating survival guides, and everything else.
Breathe. Try to relax.
No matter how much needs to be done or what your current panic is, stop. If you are within 24 hours of d-day and the important stuff isn’t done yet, then you’re probably in big trouble. By this point, you’ve done all you can do. We created a list of the things he didn’t want to mess with and I shipped them to him the day he left. They got there within a few days. (Because we have an APO address here and he has an APO address where he is, it doesn’t cost me a dime to send him stuff, no matter how big or small. Little perks.) Take the last few waking hours the day before d-day for family time. Watch a movie and eat popcorn with m&ms. Stop thinking about tomorrow, put the emotions aside, and just do what you do on any other Friday evening. Read: enjoy your precious time together.
Because when tomorrow comes, you’re going to let your words fall, your tears stream down your cheeks without a care, and you’ll show each other just how brave you are.
He’ll leave. The countdown begins. And every time you go to bed at night – it’s the low point of each and every day – after saying your prayers you will smile to yourself and remember that you’re one day closer to getting him back. And you’ll be really really proud of yourself for making it through another day. 🙂
PROST!
Happy Military Spouse Appreciation Day to the ladies and gentlemen married to the military! I salute you!
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Alison Donlon says
Love this. So well written…you are so strong! Great attitude! You got this!
Emily says
Thank you!! Some days I need to be better at remembering that!
Carol says
You are awesome Emily and he is as lucky to have you as you are to have him. We will keep you both in our prayers.
Carrie says
You made me cry again! Those wreaths….what a fantastic idea and I didn't know about them?! You are such a great writer. This one is going in the "files" for future deployed spouses too 😉