Wife of a Frequent Flyer...

Once again I have been a blog slacker but I swear I have an excuse this week.  N got his 4 month shots on Tuesday and has had his cranky pants on ever since.  He also has a cold which isn't helping anything.  Plus, once again, A was out of town from Tuesday to Friday.  So overall I've been pretty distracted with taking care of N and everything around the house.  Not only do I have to do my "chores" but I have to do A's as well. Now, I'm certainly not a feminist but I'm not from the 1950's either.  However, there are certain things that I feel are my husband's job, or are husbandy type chores.  This is probably because I don't like or feel like doing them myself when he's home, but that's a whole additional topic.

So as you already know, A travels for work.  He travels ALOT.  This month so far he has been gone 12 out of the 19 days.  This week as I was doing one of those so called "husband" chores (lugging 40lb bags of wood pellets from the garage to the pellet stove) I got to thinking about, well, independence.  There are a few people who read this blog, that if you asked them in 2003 if I could run a household and raise a child, they probably would have laughed until they cried.  Lets just say that in college and a few years afterward I was not the most responsible person (and lets leave it at that ladies, YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE).  ::ahem:: Sorry.  So anyway I was thinking about two things 1.) How much I have matured (tooting my own horn I know but if you knew me before, really, it's impossible not to notice) and 2.) How independent I am.  Both of these things I would attribute to A and his being away.  I know that seems weird.  Usually when you are in a relationship they influence your lives by being there and you grow together.  With A and I though, our whole relationship has been apart!  We met and he deployed to Iraq for 9 months.  A year later we got engaged and then he deployed to Afghanistan for a year.  6 months after he got back we got married and he moved to NY without me to train for his new job (not army, thank god) then I moved to NY and he started traveling for his job.  So our relationship made me grow in a different way than most.

Since I have been with him, I have become more independent. That may, again, seem kind of weird, but for me it has been a good thing.  I do things I never thought I would do, not because I couldn't but because I didn't think I'd have to (having a man around to do it and all) .  Like lugging 40lb bags of wood pellets in for the pellet stove, so that we have heat in the house. Like shoveling the driveway and sidewalk.  Unclogging drains and killing spiders (although that I still have MAJOR issues with).  Dealing with alot of the issues alot of married women would say, "I'll just let him deal with it", but also the everyday stuff a "wife" would usually deal with, and the stuff that's normally shared! When he's here, he does alot, and I'm not saying I wouldn't love to be able to share, or to ask him to do things.  I would LOVE to, but since he's not here I have no choice.  Now, I have to throw in that I, by no means, am comparing myself to a single mother, or to a military parent going through a deployment.  Those two groups have my utmost respect and I would never venture to compare.  However, I do get a strange sense of satisfaction from knowing that, should anything happen to A, or to our relationship (which I pray never does and don't expect to) I could do this on my own.  I don't NEED him for anything.  The only reason I need him, is because I love him and it would break my heart to have to live without him.

I think that for me, the old addage "absence makes the heart grow fonder" is true.  I mentioned in an earlier post that having N in daycare has made me appreciate my time with him even more.  Well, I think that my time apart from A not only makes me appreciate my time with him, it has made me appreciate my own strength.  Something that just a few years ago, I didn't have, but thanks to A, I found.  I may not always show my appreciation to him, for helping me become who I am, but I should.  Without A, god only knows where I'd be right now!

So looking back over this post it seems alot like I'm either just rambling or I'm bragging or I'm just weird.  I don't really know what the point of the post is, other than that I took a moment to be proud of myself and my life this week. I think it's something that everyone should do from time to time.  Look around, appreciate yourself, your family, and your life because if you don't, you'll spend your life looking forward and miss where you are right now.