I Made Plans

Well today I realised I broke a tried and true rule, Don't Make Plans. My husbands schedule has been the same all month and his duty rotation was decent enough that every few weeks he'd have one duty free. We decided that on the next duty free weekend we were going to take a day trip down to Legoland and then swing over to Busch Gardens on the next day to take advantage of the free tickets they offer to military families. Well we booked the hotel room and even made plans for this Saturday to go to a Mardi Gras pub crawl. Turns out this morning the duty sections changed. Now my husband has duty Saturday so our pub crawl tickets are useless and he'll have duty next Friday which was when we were supposed to leave for Legoland. I'm dissappointed but this is just one of those negative aspects to the Navy, you simply can not make plans that you can't change. Luckily we booked a refunable night at this hotel so we can cancel and get our money back, and I'm not too distraught aboutt the Mardi Gras tickets, it sucks don't get me wrong, but I'm far more dissappointed in the Legoland plans. Hopefully my husband will come home with better news, since this is just wife here-say and I'm sure he'll try to switch his duty day or do anything else he can to get out of this so we can still go on our mini vacation, even if we just have to move it back a little bit. 

Ugh somtimes the Navy really urks me, doing things with little to no consideratio for dependents and family, I know this is the military but when you are in port you could at least consider things like that. I'm sure if the CO had duty days and his wife had something planned he wouldn't change the duty rotation until after his wifes plans, well maybe if something isn't broke you just shouldn't fix it. One more day in a duty rotation is a retarded change, it's one thing to go from 5 days to 10 or 6 days to 3. But 5 days to 6, that's just dumb. You didn't really change that much and you aren't really helping anyone out, everyone that has a family that's been making plans and finding fun things to do around town before they change commands, move across country and start new lives somewhere else are all know thrown out of wack because who knows when you'll decide to change things again. I know this is a bitchy post, I don't really care though. This crap happens a lot. And I accept it but I also have the right to complain, and you have the right to read or not read my complaints. That's up to you but for now I've got the keyboard so I have the say LOL. It's not all bad, I have a really cool husband whom I'm sure will come in the door with a plan, Mardi Gras will certainly be off but he'll know what to do about the rest of the stuff. And then he'll make it all better as soon as he wraps those big hunky arms around me. 

UPDATE: Well he came home, the big lug, with the saddest look on his face. He wasn't able to change anything and the person that set it up was just trying to do something nice; he fucked it up, but he was just trying to do something nice so it's hard to stay mad. So we just moved somethings around  and we can still go to Legoland but we had to just scrap the bar crawl. I'm okay with that but well he's a sailor and he's being told he can't go on a bar crawl that he already paid for so that's kind of a sore subject. But all in all lesson learned. We were able to rebook the hotel and the silver lining is after that weekend he won't have anymore weekend duty days in that section. So there's something good. 

My Identity

I've noticed as a navy wife that sometimes it is difficult to maintain your own seperate and unique identity. Especially for those who live far away from friends and family (far away means no less than 6 hours in my book). When you relocate to a new town and the only friends you make are apart of the FRG or around base you fall deeper into the "Navy Wife" pit. Please don't get me wrong I love my sailor and being married to him but there is much more to who I am than just being his wife. I've found that going to school, maintaining a social life outside of command functions and keeping in good contact with family helps me to remain true to myself. When my husband and I first moved to his command I fell into a deep depression, I had no friends and since my husband had heard some vicious rumors about wives in the FRG he didn't want me to be apart of it. After several months I finally made friends with a few ship wives that seemed alright but it was different, I'd never had married friends, I never had friends with kids. I recognized myself less and less as time went on. 

When my husband deployed is when I discovered just how lost I really was. I was enrolled in college with a full 16 credit hour course load and loving it. I made straight A's, raised my GPA and made the Dean's list. After my second semester I felt amazing, I had my confidence back and my sense of purpose. It wasn't until a month before my husband was to return from his first deployment that my fear set in. I was afraid to find my husband had changed from his time at sea, I was afraid to lose myself all over again in the world of the Navy. My anxiety grew as the days drew closer, I didn't tell my husband what I was thinking. I didn't want him to think that I wasn't elated to have him home. I love my husband more than seems possible. We do everything together, the idea of losing any aspect of that relationship was terrifying. Needless to say we were fine, and I told him once he was home of my fears only to find out that he was feeling the exact same way.

The Navy puts dependents in an awkward position. We aren't in the military but we are subject to what  happens in the military and in our spouses careers. And often we fall prey to losing ourselves in all the jumble of moving, deployment, pomp and circumstance. Sometimes we just have to remember who we were before they signed their contracts, growth is a good thing but when your entire life revolves around your spouses advancements and they accomplishments at the end of the day you really don't have much to say for yourself.