I Know My Husband is Deployed When: (Part 1)

There is a saying that goes around the military lives. It is that when your husband leaves for a TDY or deployment, everything in the house breaks, gets lost, or someone gets hurt from something really random. Hard to explain, but it is something that has always happened to me and many others.

So first, I am going to tell you a little story about why I decided to write this blog. First off, I must say that Wiley's first deployment back in '07-'08 had many, many fall backs immediately following the day he left. Actually, the day my family left from seeing him off. It seemed everything started to crumble right before my eyes, but with this life, you know that you can never give up and must push on. God chose this life for me, and he knew I would grow a strength I've never even imagined. With that deployment, this strength was broken from its shell and shown from my actions. The next goodbye to Wiley was some short Honor Guard hours, which did not seem to phase me much. However, the very next TDY that Wiley went on was...... after we got here to England, he went to Romania.

Wiley left for Romania, which was suppose to be a 30 day TDY. (It ended up only being 2 weeks.) The day he left, random things began to happen. I was cleaning out the closet one day and dropped a stereo on my head. Another day, I rolled down the stairs. Another day, Buttons was being a bad, bad puppy. So it all just came crashing down. You know the saying, "When it rains, it pours." Yep, I experience that a lot when Wiley is away. But this time, I must say it was different... at least for the first half.

Wiley left for Afghanistan a few days after Christmas. Things started out rough because I had to drive his car because I was waiting on the MOT sticker for my car and the roads were icy. On the way home, I slid really bad and almost hit another vehicle. As I am driving home all I can think is, "If this is already happening to me, I hate to see what's next." Well as time went on nothing happened to me. I just overlooked it and thought something was bound to happen to me. It wouldn't be normal if I went a whole deployment and nothing happened. So one day, I was fixing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (which by the way Brits think is nasty!) and on my way to dig for the peanut butter with my butter knife, the knife just broke. Hard to explain, but this is not something just anyone can manage to do. It was a magic trick that I am still not aware of how I pulled it off. I know crazy, right?! Well OVER half of the deployment goes on, and Wiley decides to ask me what I have broken, including myself. So I sit back and think... and so I tell him, "Surprisingly nothing, yet." And he laughs. From that moment on, I should have knocked on wood, but it never even crossed my mind. BIG MISTAKE. The following week EVERYTHING decided to take a tumble. I slip and fell in the shower (*blush*), someone decides to be extremely needed to me and calls me every 5 seconds of the day, I was running off of 4 hours a sleep a night because I either couldn't sleep or someone would interrupt my sleep, school was getting hectic because finals were coming up... on and on. But to top off the week, my car. Yes, my car. I guess I decided to hit a nail, so on Sunday morning I wake up to a flat tire. Seriously, at this point, all I could do was laugh. What else was I suppose to do? I get out my car, jump into Wiley's car and off I go. I come back home and every single time I look at my car, I laugh. I got someone to change the tire to my doughnut so I could drive on base to get a replacement, and guess what?!!! YES, YOU ARE RIGHT! My doughnut is flat, too! Ok, so that is where I am now. Things have calmed down since then though. I was just so frustrated that it all had to happen at the end of the deployment. I mean come on, if you are going to test my strength then at least make me suffer for the full four months.

Wiley was surprisingly worried about me and what I was going to do. When he asked exactly that, I just giggled and said, "Uhh duh, air up to tire, drive your car, and get if fixed." That wasn't so hard to realize. He was like, "no, no, no.. wait until I get home." What am I not capable of doing this myself? Come on. But really it was sweet that he worried about me. Even sweeter that he actually felt bad about me having to drive his car. He normally tells me to suck it up and move on, which I am thankful for because now I can drive his car like a pro. But still.. he was sweet for reacting that way.

This will have another part to it because I would like to add in the simple things in life that change for me when Wiley is away. Hence, Part 1 up there in parenthesis.