Yesterday Kurt took his final exam, missing just one question, and he was told he had to take a quiz and a lab final. Fine, no problem -- that was scheduled for today. So I spent a night of worrying, staying up until the insane hour of at least 1:30am last night wondering if Kurt was going to find out the next day if he could come home, and to make matters worse I was rudely awakened at 8am by several things -- the heat in my bedroom, the sun slicing through the mini-blinds to stab me in the eye, and the thought that Kurt was going to know today if he could come home.
I called his phone at 8:30am but didn't leave a message, as we're rather short on minutes this month, and I didn't want him to have to check his voicemail. When he called me back within the hour, he wanted to know why I called him so early since I tend not to get up until at least 9am, more like 9:30.
At that point he had no news for me. At all. Except that he'd taken his quiz and missed a few (no big deal since it was worth only 5% of his grade), but his lab final was going to be postponed till tomorrow because the civilians needed it and he couldn't use it today. That was enough to send me into a royal mood, and at that point I did not want to even talk to him.
I know it wasn't fair of me to punish him for something he had no control over, but I was tired, and I was hot, and now all this worrying and wondering I had done the night before and this morning was for naught since it seemed like we wouldn't know anything for another day. I have been waiting since the 5th of July to hear if he could even come home, and being in a state of limbo is not conducive to my micro-managing, always in control mentality. Especially when the state of limbo is prolonged as long as it has been.
I gave up at that point and went back to bed. I couldn't sleep, but at least I had a good book to get me through the day. I didn't even get dressed until noon, which is very unlike me. Even when I'm not going anywhere, I always put something other than my nightgown on, even if it's not nice enough to consider going to the post office in.
At some point, Kurt called me back. I briefly considered not even answering the phone, but that was my childish pettiness coming through again, so I picked up. He spouted off two numbers to me -- 1301 and 1904. Of course, I didn't quite know what he was talking about, but even as I grouchily asked him to explain, my spirits rose a bit because flight numbers can be four digits, right??
Sure enough, he's on flight 1301 out of Chicago on Friday, arriving here at 1904 hrs, which to you non-military people is 7:04pm.
You would think at this point I would be throwing a party and calling everyone in my phone book that Kurt was finally coming home, and in only three days as well. That would be the appropriate reaction. Unfortunately, it wasn't the one Kurt got, and neither could I conjure it up for him. He was understandably a little perturbed because I have told him over and over again that all I needed to feel better was to know that he was going to be able to come home, that I didn't need an exact time and date. And here he was, giving me flight info -- even more detail than I required.
I just feel, though, that I am sunk too far down at this particular moment in time to be able to rejoice. It's retarded of me, I know, because here I am, getting exactly what I want, and I still can't be happy about it. I didn't say it made any sense. There are other factors affecting me that I don't want to get into on such a public arena that have nothing to do with Kurt that are also contributing. But Kurt coming home can go a huge way toward mitigating those problems because he's nothing if not my rock and my support system.
Maybe it is just the pregnancy hormones; I don't know. I do know I am excessively tired from the restless night I had last night, so maybe in the clear light of day tomorrow after I sleep like the dead I will feel better. It would make sense. If the heat would abate, that would also help, but that doesn't look terribly likely.
I feel horribly because I can't get excited. I know Kurt was really counting on this making me feel better, and he feels pretty helpless now that he's given me what I said I needed, and it doesn't seem to help. Maybe I was just so worn down with worrying that now that I don't have to worry, I just can't recover. I don't know.
Plus I am stressing a little bit about this baby shower that J is throwing me. I know I should just sit back and enjoy folks making a fuss over me, but I have always been someone who stays in the wings, never the person on stage. Occasionally I do enjoy being the center of attention -- who doesn't? But it's happened so rarely to me that I don't really know how to handle it. And even though it will be a small shower with my closest friends here, I know they're going to go buy me a gift, and I don't handle that well either. It seems as though I'm begging for gifts for the baby. I never had a wedding shower, and the last birthday party I had was for my 22nd birthday (a surprise that my roommate threw me which was just rad), so I'm way out of practice in the whole "Let's make Karyl the center of attention" thing.
I don't mean to sound like an ungrateful bitch, and that's probably the way it's coming across. I'm just in a serious funk, and I don't know how to pull myself out of it. I think I am also experiencing a bit of the nervousness that comes when a spouse welcomes her sailor home again. The same, "what's going to happen? Will he fit in to my schedule? Will we get along again after so long being apart? Can my micro-managing self be able to overlook the small things he does simply because he does stuff differently from me?" coupled with "will we get everything done for the baby? What's life going to be like once the baby comes? Will we be good parents? Will I be a good mom? How does this whole mom thing work anyhow?!" Plus now he'll be going to a new ship, and it's across the water, so now he'll be a ferry commuter. How's all that going to work??
At least one thing I can be sure of and look forward to... Now that he'll be home, I can relinquish kitchen duties to him, which will not bother me in the least. When he came home from WestPac last year, I was so gung ho to show him how well I could cook, and I will probably do that once again when he goes back to work, but for the time he's home on leave, I think I will leave the cooking to him. The kitchen's too blasted hot anyhow, and I am just so tired of cooking.
I am sure everything will look better tomorrow, now that I have had time to decompress and destress about everything. Once I get a good night's sleep (and why I'm still up this late is a mystery to me), I should be fine again. I'm getting what I wanted, and that's Kurt home early. It's just been a really rough summer, and I am exceedingly glad to see this phase of it come to an end.