Friday's Letters

Dear Friday.  You kind of showed up abruptly this week.  I had all these things planned, lists to be completed, to-dos to be done...none of it happened.  Oops.  Dear Husband.  I think we're officially within the one month mark of you coming home to me (plus or minus a few days).  As much as I'd like to say that this deployment flew by, it really didn't.  Your homecoming has been long awaited.  Dear summer.  I thought I'd be bored without a job for the couple months until DH came home, but I have been gladly mistaken.  Lots of puppy walks, time spent with friends, photo sessions, shopping days...I've enjoyed this time off so far.  Dear Russian girls.  I made an impromptu offer to host you young ladies for a few weeks this summer, and have since gone back and forth between whether or not it was the right decision.  I'm still extremely terrified, but I also can't wait!  One more week until you arrive, and we spin into a whirlwind of trips, activities, games, and sign language since we won't be able to understand each other.  I wish I had more experience with children, but I'm sure I can handle a couple 11 year olds...right?!  Dear upcoming wedding session.  I'm more confident in my ability to keep two children alive than I am to capture a wedding.  So much pressure!  Thanks for your faith in my abilities, but are you two sure you don't want to back out for someone more experienced?  Dear self.  Weight loss goals have been met, but not exactly in the way you planned.  You never once turned on your super cool interactive Xbox games designed to shed those pounds, and instead relied on dog walks and smaller meals.  It worked, but I still call you lazy.  Time to make a life change...starting NOW.

Photoshoots

If I thought life would slow down once school released for the summer, I was dead wrong.  Here's what I've been doing with my time, and what will NOT be happening next week since I'm letting myself take a break and catch up on to-dos.

The Awful Confession

I admittedly rely on my husband a TON when he's around, but during the days that he's away I've come to realize how independent and self-reliant I can be.  Need to hang new curtains on rods that are about ten feet off the ground?  No problem.  Take care of dogs, work, chores, school, and social life by myself?  Got it.  Not kill myself from boredom when the only things I ever talk to are dogs and the straight iron (which seems to never realize what its job entails...STRAIGHT, dammit)?  Done and done.  But recently it hit me that I'm almost too good at these things, and I've begun to worry that DH coming home might be more difficult than the last time.

I don't know how to be married anymore.

Not to say that I'm living up some single life, hitting the town every weekend or chatting up boys.  But I don't remember what it's like to have to take care of two people instead of one, or how to share the load, or how to share a bed with another human being.  I don't know how to be part of a team instead of army of one.  And that, my friends, breaks my heart into pieces.

The time is drawing closer to when DH will be walking down that long hallway in the passenger terminal, ABUs faded from desert sun and A-bags in hand.  He'll have raccoon eyes from wearing sunglasses too much during the day, will think it's cold during our summer after dealing with 120 degree temps, and will want real food as soon as we step out the terminal doors.  I'm terrified because all I can think of is how will he know when Sass needs to be let out?  He doesn't have a clue where I put anything in the kitchen, I'll have to play tour guide in our own house.  Does he even know how to get home?  What about dog walks when I'm not there?  How am I going to fit him into my schedule?  The man will have served six months on deployment, and all I can think about is how we're going to get back to where we were before.  Am I a horrible person?  Yes.  But I don't know how to fix this.  My husband has become a computer face, a text message that arrives intermittently throughout the day, an email asking me how I'm doing.  I make plans with this electronic figure and schedule vacations or dates, but it doesn't compute that he will transform into a real human in the very new future.

Calling all expert military spouses in the world: what should I do?  How do I prepare myself for a room mate when all I've experienced for so long is living on my own?