Army Guy and Life Lesson #42

You know I love my husband. LOVE him. But sometimes, I worry about him. 

Re-integration is a beast and it rears it's ugly head in the most randomest of ways. We've been VERY fortunate to not have significant mental/physical health issues to deal with. I praise God for that every day and say a prayer for those are who and their families. 

Re-integration always bits me in the butt in the whole "I can do it myself" way. I feel like a toddler wandering around stomping my feet every time Army Guy says "oh here, let me do that". I know he's being helpful and I really do appreciate it. But there are sometimes when I'd rather suffer for 10 mins trying to open the jar then have him open it in 3 seconds. Partly because there's that whole look he gives after he opens it in 3 seconds and I've been wrangling with it swearing like a sailor for the last 10 minutes. It's a subtle look, but after being married for 10 years and knowing him for 15 years, I know the look of "nanny nanny boo boo" when I see it. But mainly because I'm not always sure when he'll be home to open bottle and I just need to know that I can do it myself. 

Yesterday, I was having one of those battle with a newly purchased bottle of olive oil. The protective wrap wouldn't come off and there was lots of swearing going on. Army Guy was in the kitchen messing with car parts and had his wow fancy, sharp knife with him. I should've just reached for the band-aids at that point. And as I'm literally opening my mouth to say "you know I wouldn't take a knife to that...I'll take care of it..." it happened. Yah, knife slip, finger slice, husband not saying a word but death grip on bleeding finger. Crap. I get him to stand up and hold finger over sink to look at it and realize yah, it's gonna need stitches. Crap. Call to the wife to see if she can watch kiddos and off to ER we go. 

Sign in, triage, hurry up and wait. By this time, Army Guy is in pretty good pain. So, being in the ER with a sick kiddo is one kind of awful experience, but being in the ER with a 5'10", 185, solid guy who's gasping for air randomly because of pain is way worse. Finally get back to bed and get awesome nurse/PA Student team who announce that yes stitches will be needed, they'll do an x-ray, and they'll get him some pain meds. 45 minutes later, pain meds show up and off to x-ray he goes. 45 minutes later, nurse and PA come back and say everything is clear,so they'll clean wound, deaden finger and start stitches. Crap. Army Guy HATES needles. Big H, Big A, Big T, Big E. He tolerates them well, he just literally gets cranky at the sight of needles. At this point, I seriously think I should make a break for the door. But I decide to be the good wife and hang out. Brownie point for me. 

So the needles come out and the deadening shots ensue. 2 on each side. And we all make funny banter about his pain and this somehow being payback for me pushing 3 children from my loins while we wait for finger to numb up. After the appropriate time, nurse chick barely touches the end of injured finger and Mike still visibly flinches. No big deal, just more deadening shots. Yay. More needles. So 4 more shots. More time waiting. At this point, Army Guy decides he'll just take the stitches over more numbing shots. Right. Who in their right freakin mind decides they'd rather feel stitches. Sigh...my husband. Several years ago, he smushed the end of his finger off (different finger) and in a failed attempt to re-attach it (he can only count to 9 3/4 now...hahaha), they gave him 21 shots of deadening stuff and ended up feeling stitches after the 4th stitch. After listening to him tell the nurse that after his 5th shot of deadening stuff, I once again ponder the idea of making a break for it. 

Nurse consults with PA and they decide to do one more round in the knuckle and give it 10 minutes to numb up. At the 7 minute mark the nurse (and I use that term VERY loosely) who walked us back to the bed 3 hours ago, walks by, sees us waiting and says "they still haven't stitched you up yet???" This should've been a a clue on his powers of observation. Big Red Flag kind of warning. We both mumble something about waiting for it to deaden and "nurse" says "oh well, let me go check with PA and I'll get this taken care of for you guys". He walks off and we breathe a sigh of relief because last time PA was in, he said he'd do the stitches. Whew! "Nurse" gets out the door and we hear 'I was just coming to look for you, do you want me to stitch him up so he can go?'. Crap. So they come in and PA says "well did it deaden up anymore?" and "nurse" replies "oh yah, he's ready to go". And then in less then 3 seconds, PA is out the door and "nurse" is sticking needle in NOT deaden finger. I will say that yes, at that point we should've said "hey, STOP!" but the reality is Army Guy was soooo ready to be done that he didn't say anything thinking it'd take all of 3 seconds and it probably would've taken 3 seconds if we'd had the nurse/PA team that we'd been so lucky to have up to this point. But no, we got "nurse" guy who had to stick Army Guy SEVERAL times to get each stitch started. 4 stitches later, I'm thinking Army Guy has earned some heroic medal for not killing the "nurse". The "nurse" was completely oblivious to Army Guy flinches, holding his breath, and foot movement that indicated immense pain. The "nurse" announces he's done, he'll get it cleaned up, have PA look at it and we'll be out the door. Thank God. At least the worst is over!!! Right. I've seen power washers be less abrasive then this "nurse" with scrubby brush. So I get that Army Guy was going to take these stitches even if he felt them, but yah, the obnoxious scrubbing to remove betadine was a bit much. So I say "Ummm, yah, you might want to be a little softer that finger isn't as numb as you think it is" and he says "Oh, I'm not scrubbing where I gave him stitches.". Sigh. PA comes in, signs off on stitches, we get bag of goodies, instructions to keep it dry and have stitches removed in 10 days, obligatory motrin and out the door we go.

So now here we sit. Army Guy got a new computer game because well he can't play PS3 without all of the use of both hands. And through all of this it made me think. A)I really thought the first time I'd be at the ER with stitches would've been with Thing 2. B)At 32, why would you think a knife would be an acceptable tool to open a bottle C) There's going to be lots more stomping, swearing and non-opening bottle frustration around here. D) No matter what Army Guy says, spending 5 hours at ER followed by a trip to Taco Bell, does NOT count as a date. 

Welcome Home ArmyGuy

Army Guy is officially done with the WORST DEPLOYMENT EVER (and from this point on, it shall be known as that...but you have to say it all echo-y to get the best effect). We're waiting on orders to be 110% done with this stage in our life, but being stateside is one step closer to that. And I'll take every inch I can get. We knew he was coming home over a week ago, but didn't make a huge announcement about it. Partly because I didn't actually believe it. But mostly because he's coming home all by himself--the unit isn't coming in for a bit and part of our old unit will be coming in even later then that. Add onto that, friends who's husbands just left or are leaving in the next 30 days, it just didn't seem right to shout out to the world "MINE'S HOME!!! AND EARLY!!!". And I try to not beat myself up with Army Guilt because even though Army Guy is home early, there's a decent chance that he'll get into this program that will have him back out the door in 90 days-ish for a short school and then deployed again. I'm choosing the Ostrich Method of coping with that. It's been successful so far, but I digress. Anywho, so there will be those who say "you know every deployment is different, and you should be glad he's home and you should shout it out to the world" and there will be those who say "you suck.". And I feel both sides of that.

Then there's this whole other side. A somber side, that I don't like to wrap my brain around but I'm going to go there all because of a show on Lifetime...damn Lifetime. Tonight is the premiere of "Coming Home" a show where soldiers surprise family members upon their return from deployment. Lots of tears. Lots of happiness. Lots of smiles. Our current post is seeing a lot of returning soldiers and so Lifetime camped out for a while filming some of the soldiers returns and whatnot. From what I understand, you had to apply to be on the show and then it went from there. And I'm 100% that those who applied and got selected are glad that they did it, but for me, "Coming Home" is a bit much. And Army Guy's homecoming made it a bit much for me.

See, Army Guy didn't really have set plans for a return--it was pretty much "here's your release, good luck..." The first flight out of county was a Hero Flight, a flight with a Fallen Soldier. So while my Army Guy is bouncing out of country early, there's a family somewhere getting the worse news ever. He said it was an incredibly somber flight for all on the plane...rightfully so. Then his entry point into the States was at Dover where they were performing 3 Dignified Transfers on a Saturday. 3 Fallen home for in an unanticipated way. 3 families who had visions of different welcome home ceremonies/events. 3 families who don't get the Lifetime opportunity.

When we went to pick Army Guy up from airport, I didn't tell the kiddos who we were picking up, I just said I had a friend flying in late. My usually insanely inquisitive kids didn't seem to ask too many questions-"have we met your friend before, where is your friend staying, why can't your friend be here before 10:30pm?". I answered as vaguely as possible and off we went to pick up "my friend" from the airport well after their bedtime. And so in an effort not to tip the kiddos off, we waited patiently (some more then others...cough*Thing2*cough) by baggage claim. And I recorded the kiddos with my camera in an attempt to capture the fact that I could actually surprise them. So as people finally start coming down the escalators, I see boots. And then ACUs. And I'm watching kiddos who are watching the same boots and ACUs and not having any reaction to them and I start panicking. "Crap! What if the kids don't recognize him? What if they're all like 'oh hey dad, we're waiting on mom's friend...' What if they say 'Dad! Why are you home?'" and at just that moment, Thing 1 recognizes it's Army Guy, yells "DADDY!" and takes off and I just laughed and for a brief moment we were the only ones in the airport.

So I sit down tonight to watch "Coming Home" in excitement because well I want to see how we, Military Peeps, are going to be presented to the rest of the world. I want the world to see us during one of our most happiest times. I want the world to know that while our life is hard, it's rewarding. And then the dryer let me know it was done. Sigh. So while I'm folding laundry in the laundry room, I'm listening to the show still on in living room and am a sobby mess. Thankfully Army Guy is snoring on the couch as he is a "why are you crying at the tv" kind of guy. After finishing the laundry, I start "Coming Home" all over again and get about 5 minutes into it when I realize while it's a good premise for a show and I'm insanely glad Lifetime is presenting it, I don't think I'll be watching it after all. Because for as much as I want the world to see us during our most happiest times, I also want that to be MY moment. OUR moment. Not me, Army Guy, kiddos and a camera crew of 30 with an eventual broadcast to millions. That's our special time. That's my time to be big strong and sniffly because Thing 1 recognized his Dad and ran through a crowd of people without even looking twice, because Thing 2 gave her Dad a giant hug and then promptly reminded him that she needed hinges for a project they worked on over R&R, and because Sam-I-Am smiled big and laughed with the other kiddos when her Dad took her pluggie away. Those are MY moments. OUR moments. OUR memories.

But those are also moments that I never once take for granted. Those are moments that I know I'm lucky to have. Those are moments that I know families of Fallen Soldiers would give anything to have and that makes those moments all the more precious and private to me.

Even if we are standing in the middle of a crowded airport.

Change is a constant pain in my....

I know all too well that change is a constant and I enjoy change immensely. What I don't enjoy is knowing that I have change coming, but not knowing an arrival window for said change. It makes me feel like I'm just floating around, not able to start any tasks because I'm not sure if I'll be able to complete them. It makes me feel all out of whack with the world. It also makes me get all caught up on my DVR because well there's no point in doing anything else but sitting around watching tv...

Army Guy is currently in flux with his assignment.