Well, it was nice while it lasted.

This is how you know I am really upset about something. I don't want to talk about it. It's taking a lot for me to write this right now. I don't want to think about it.

He started "cranking" today. Basically he's working in the kitchen. It's a job that every new guy does and is a notoriously crappy job. The hours alternate between 16 hour and 8 hour on and off shifts. I can remember which order he said. And it's 7 days a week. That's the big kicker. No weekends. For a long time. Likely until he deploys again.

*long sigh* He won't be coming down on the weekends anymore so, it's going to be a while before I get to see him again. :( It's not even worth it for me to go up to see him because he wouldn't have any time anyway.

And in between all this he still has to be working on his quals. So, he's going to be very busy, very tired, and very far away.

Yesterday when he told me, I didn't even react. I felt like i was just so used to the Navy doing this stuff, and it's just another thing to deal with. I can't change it. Why get upset about it. But now it's setting in and I am upset about it. Fighting back tears a little bit while writing this.

This sucks.

Surprise!

So, I'm walking to my car at the gym and I hear some guy yell, "Hey pretty lady!". I kind of paused for a second... do i want to turn around? I do, and I see this guy who looks and awful lot like my husband, who is supposed to be back out in the middle of the ocean by now. That's right. Monkey's home! Yay!

He couldn't stay for long. Just one night, but that's still awesome considering I wasn't supposed to see him for almost another week. Hooray! I guess since they were back in port his boat wanted their guys back.

This does come with a couple down sides though. Since he wasn't gone as long and they planned he doesn't get to be home for a whole week like he was supposed to. And he has duty over the 4th of July weekend so I might not get to seem him much, if at all for that. :( Which is especially a bummer because I have Monday the 5th off of work so we would have had a whole long weekend together before I had to go back to work. Oh well. Semper Gumby. He's home and that makes me happy. He's going to try and make it down for the 4th to hang out with family for fireworks but he's still working on that.

Midnight phone call from a pier.

Last night about 10:30 I received a very unexpected phone call. It was Monkey! It was SO good to hear his voice!!! I thought that he was home early. But, turns out something (that he couldn't tell me but wasn't too bad) happened and they had to come into port last night. They didn't stay long though. They were right back out again.

We got to talk for about 2 and a half hours. Again, SO good to talk to him. Missing him SO much! He's doing awesome, gettin' his stuff done. His bag-o-bribes are working out nicely getting his quals done. He had a few more little stories to tell me, but I'll leave something for him to write about when he gets home. ;) He said he expects that with how much progress he's making he'll be able to get his dolphins on his first trip out on his boat. That's awesome!

He also said that with that out of the way he expects he'll be able to make a lot of progress on college courses while he's underway. Also very awesome. I'm so so proud of this guy and his determination to just kiss ass with what he's doing and where he wants to go. LOVE HIM!

The only bad report, besides being pretty tired, has been an ongoing debacle with his water bottle, or lack there of. Seems he forgot to bring one so he isn't able to keep hydrated very well between meals. He was finally able to procure one, and it ends up falling of his (top) rack and breaking.

Well, that's all I have time for. Back to work. He'll be home soon! I know we all can't wait.

MAIL CALL!!

YEA! I finally got more email from him. I was starting to get pretty bummed not hearing from him. It kills me though, the (understandable) latency of the email system. In his last email he asks me to please keep him updated, which means he hasn't received many of my emails. I've been writing him every day. I guess he'll get them all at once though and he'll know. They come in waves. He's been writing them but they can't send except when they are close enough to the surface. So, while i haven't heard from him in a while, I received three emails this morning.

He seems to be very busy. And kind of tired. But kickin' butt and getting his quals done. I will share parts of his emails below:

Today is 19-June. I finished my NavWatch qualification card. But now they are putting me out on sticks because that s what my CoB asked them to do. Which is ridiculous since I will probably never stand it on my own boat, and it takes so long to qualify it normally that I wont be actually standing it for them, just doing UIs.... Oh well......

Drills every day are kinda fun. Kinda...... I am getting better and better as we do them. But I keep messing up things that seem little - but they are things that could like... kill me. I got a funny specific one for you...

So, I was in the engine room yesterday, looking at some actuators for the emergency flood control system. I was asking a nuke back there about how the system was organized. So as we were talking about it a couple chiefs came by holding a red flashing light (fire) and a sign indicating it was a drill. At the time I was on watch (as a UI). I kind of forgot about that for a moment. You see, every watch has a particular job for every different casualty and they are different if you are oncoming, off-going or ON watch. So as the guy I was talking to ran to sound the 4MC and call away the fire, I stood there like "Alright, Cool - I will get to watch this evolution without having to be a part of it so I can see what people do." - Certain drills like this one indicate on the sign that it is for ON watch personnel only. I asked myself since I was watching it "What would I be doing right now if I was Navwatch and ON watch?...... Oh shit! I AM on watch!" I then ran to grab a fire extinguisher and ran towards the fire without going into battle dress or grabbing an EAB, not a good move really - the monitors instructed me to get into battle dress, don an EAB and come back, which I did... Anyways - I thought it was a funny situation.

Today we had a big drill, I did better than I have, but still need work on where to go, but I think its normal for not having been on a boat that long. The rest of the crew, for the most part, as far as the senior personnel are pretty damned good at it, it is impressive. [John] just about suffocated someone though cause they were daisy chained his EAB and he unplugged from the air manifold.

Well...

Well... One week down. Wasn't as bad as i thought it would be but i'm definitely feeling it more than i was at the beginning of the week. Especially since it's friday and he would usually be home for the weekend right now.

It took a couple of days to get over the urge to text him every time i wanted to talk to him. Instead i've been keeping a saved draft in my email and i've been writing everything down throughout the day and sending it all in an email before i go to bed. It's not quite the same as telling him in person but it gets all the things i want to tell him out of my mind so i can sleep. Well sort of. It's been a little bit hard to fall asleep without being able to say goodnight to him. It just feels like my day isn't quite complete without it.

Tomorrow is my dance performance. I'm a little bummed he won't be there. But i'm getting a dvd so he'll see it when he gets home.

Ok well speaking of the performance i have to get to bed so i'm well rested for it.

Night all!

Ok, here we go...

Can't sleep, and so i shall blog. Forgive the typos, i'm using my ipod.

So we are briefly into the first week of our first deployment. I have to say that while i miss him terribly and can not wait for him to come home, i am actually doing better than i thought i would. Perhaps i was more prepared mentally than i thought i was because we thought he would be deploying soon about three different times now. This one kind of snuck up on us though. None the less it's not as bad as i had anticipated. I say this now, but we'll see if that changes over the next couple weeks. I suspect it will. I think it also helps that i know this one is shorter. He's on another boat as a rider so he's only gone for a few weeks rather than a few months. So i guess it's like a little practice deployment for us. Also i am excited for him. He's been in school for a year and a half. He was getting really antzy to get to do his job. He is really excited to get on a boat and start kicking butt. He is determined to bust out his quals as fast as he can with an ultimate goal of qualifying quarter master faster than one typically would. I am so proud of him for how hard he is working and how much he puts into all of this.

I also underestimated how effective it is for me to keep occupied. Already i can see that this is going to be the key to getting through the long deployments. As long as i have things scheduled i have kinds of mini goals to break up my days. Makes things go much faster. I currently have two whole unclaimed days per week. This sunday i moped a little and slept till one before getting up to go to his little bros birthday party. I have to say it felt good to get out knowing i was doing something other than having a pitty party. Plus family is much more supportive than facebook. As it should be. Though i do appreciate those facebook friends who i did talk to who urged me to get my butt outside to the nice weather.
Oh so those two unclaimed days i was talking about. I think i may fill tham with yoga. I found a really cool yoga studio next to one of my dance studios. I think i'll just do drop in classes though. No more commitments for me. If i like it better than sleeping i will stick with it. If not i'll find something else to keep me occupied. Besides it will be more flexible this way. And when monkey is home i dont have to go. There is no way he would go with me. They are hot yoga classes and we all know how much he loves the heat. Haha.

Alright well i think i have just about blogged my thumbs off so i will let you get back to your regularly scheduled programing.

Oh p.s. If anyone is doing anything fun in the next few weeks and has room for a tag along ... Well ya know... I'm kinda... Available... Just sayin :)

Cannon Beach and the Big D.

So, we were in fact able to go to the beach. We weren't able to stay at the place we wanted to so we stayed at the ocean lodge instead. I highly recommend it!!! It was a beautiful building to start, we had an ocean front room and you could walk right out the back onto the beach.

We arrived a little before check-in so we doubled back to seaside for some window shopping and salt water taffy.

Sunday night we went to the market a got some wine (ok, arbor mist), and cheese. Tasty cheese! We sat on our Adirondack chair with our "wine" and cheese and watched the sunset. It was quite perfect.

Monday morning we headed out for more shopping in Cannon Beach. We picked up a couple souvenirs. Monkey bought my a very pretty ring with opal in it that will go with the necklace he got me for Christmas. :) The weekend had been mostly grey but no rain, thankfully. But of course, as soon as we decide we're done in Cannon Beach the sun comes out and it was beautiful! Oh well.



Of course this wonderful weekend ended up being very good timing. We just found out on Friday that he will be going on another boat as a rider. So he will be deploying much earlier than we were anticipating. :( I cannot give out specific dates, however this means that he will be missing our Harmony School performance, but he should be back in time for our anniversary. So, it was a good thing we had this weekend. And a wonderful weekend it was. It really was quite perfect.

What the Frock!

Ups and downs the week, whew! It's been crazy already.

Weekend and the lake was great! I wish we would have been able to come up Friday instead of Saturday night and have another day, but I had ballerina duties that I couldn't miss two weeks in a row. It was a really cool setup, awesome view, and everything was run off of solar power. Even the toilet. :) Well, the pump that refilled the toilet. So every time someone flushed there was about 45 seconds of wall shaking humming (at least in our room). I came to dub it "the dragon", as in - if you flush at night you'll wake the dragon. It was more amusing than anything else, but did make for a great alarm clock. We had a chance to play around on some ATV's, once we got them running. We were disappointed that there wasn't really anyplace to go really mess around on them. Then on the way out, down the one road we didn't take, we found at least two ATV tracks/trails. Oh, well. Next time. Also, I have to give "Pop" props on the steak. I devoured mine, and stole part of Monkey's. We were supposed to have a bon fire the last night but it was a little too drizzly, so we watched Zombie Land, Alien vs Predator, and Office Space (none of which I had *gasp* ever seen) while we made s'mores in the wood stove. Equally tasty, though!



On the drama flip side, his week started off with him discovering that his email account(s) had been hacked. We quickly took his email off of the blog, and changed all his passwords. He was eventually able to regain control of his email account but everything has already been wiped out. All his contacts, and saved emails and information. He's not sure if it was a key logger on his computer that came with something he downloaded or if they got in through another means. Either way it seems to be sorted out now. Hopefully.

He also ended up losing his check-in sheet that he was nearly finished with. But he got that worked out too.

Now back to the happy. He got frocked this week and gets to "wear his crows". Which means he gets to wear all his shiny new petty officer patches and collar devices now. :D

Lastly, he just found out that this coming Monday is a holiday for him, so work permitting we are going to try use our giftcard to the beach! I don't even care if it's raining. It's a really cool chalet and I would totally be ok with being "stuck" inside the whole time.

Well, that's that. A couple more days to go this week. We'll see how it all pans out.