Kurt and I got married while he was on shore duty. In fact, he was in the most slack job I've ever heard of in the Navy, but one which I almost hope he could get again! He worked in the powder-coat shop (you know that candy-shell enamel stuff baked onto metal? That's powder-coat, and it protects the metal from corrosion. His job was to apply the stuff) on second shift, from 3-11pm.
About a year after he got to that job, the command ran out of money. As a result, Kurt never ever put in another 8-hour day at that job. He was lucky to work more than two hours a day.
It was great!!!
I had a housewife! I was working at an industrial hygiene company way out in Virginia Beach. It took me an hour to get to and from work, so it was lovely having him home all the time to cook and clean and do everything I do now as a housewife. He'd leave for work around 2:30pm and he'd almost always beat me home.
The only thing that rankled is he was making twice what I was making, and I was working four times as hard.
But anyhow.
When we moved here, I was used to having my husband around all the time. Standing duty was a joke -- he had to "stand duty" one weekend a month or so, and all that entailed was carrying around a beeper all weekend in case one of his guys was thrown in jail. We just couldn't leave the area for that one weekend.
It was quite a change once we arrived in Washington. Two weeks after we moved into our very first house, I had to put him on a plane to Bahrain where he would join his ship in support of the beginning of the Iraqi war. Here I was, three thousand miles from everyone I knew and loved, all alone, in a state I had never even visited before.
That first deployment was very hard. For one thing, there was no end date; I had no clue when his job in the Persian Gulf would be complete. He'd be home when he'd be home. It ended up to be seven months; the ship itself had been gone eight. That's a really long time, especially when it's your first deployment.
Fortunately we had email. But for some reason, it was almost as if Kurt and our marriage had been some sort of very nice dream I'd had the year before. That's not to say I didn't take my marriage vows seriously; it was just very hard to remember that I did in fact have a husband. He didn't feel all that real to me anymore in spite of the five to ten emails he'd send me a day.
Before his second deployment, we bought him a digital camera. I think it's the best investment we ever made. Now I can see my husband, and I don't struggle with those feelings of unreality anymore. I can see what he's doing, what he looks like, how he's taking care of himself. I can almost hear his voice in the photos, smell his scent, feel his warmth and strength.
Now I can see where he's been and the things he tries to describe to me over email. I can see the department store where all the shirts are organized by color, instead of simply relying on my own imagination to conjure up the image. It makes dealing with a deployment so much easier.
And when you receive photos like the one below, you just can't help but giggle.
Gotta love him!!!
PS - Click on my Flickr banner at the top of the page to see more photos from his current deployment.