Hubby the Science Guy

Occasionally emergencies occur while Hubby is gone that are not my emergencies. We have a sweet, Italian lady who lives next door. Apparently there was some sort of cooking incident that seemingly permanently sealed a pot and lid. She called asking for assistance because my cooking skills are legend, ahem. After a quick call to my dad and now the fear that if there is air trapped inside that heating the pan could cause an explosion, I decided to do what any self-respecting person does in these instances, I googled and facebooked to see if anyone had any solutions. I finally decided that the safest solution, the one not involving explosions and the fear of sausage guts sprayed all over my kitchen, was icing the lid while giving the pot a hot spa treatment. All of this excitement was going on in the hours before Hubby was returning from a 3 week det (for the non-military, this is a long business trip) from Japan. The hours prior to his return there *might* be a flurry of cleaning and general clean up since the cat is returning and the mice have been playing....and now there are sausages visiting the spa on my kitchen counter.

A very jet-lagged Hubby walks in to see the hostages sausages on the counter and I'm sure immediately thinks this is just another example of my fine cooking skills. I explain the situation and he doesn't do much more than smile and nod and move on to other things. I am considering just buying my neighbor a new pot and pan and being done with the mess.

We go to bed and all is peaceful until about 5am when I am sure there has just been a gunshot downstairs. I went running downstairs (in hindsight this was probably not wise), and am confronted with the smell of death. Hubby looks at me with chagrin, but informs me that the hostages are now free but he thinks they might be bad. Uh, like I said, smell of death is in the air. Italian sausages that have been iced and cooled all day in a pan give off a smell similar to dead skunk.

Hubby quietly returns to bed with the understanding that tomorrow we will be making a list of approved QUIET activities for him to do while suffering from jetlag.

Not-so-secret Secret

One of the perks of being married to an airline employee is that you get to fly for free. We live outside of Atlanta, the busiest airport in the United States, so it is pretty easy to fly off to almost any destination. There are direct flights here pretty much to any place in the United States and many cities around the world. Paris, Naples, Crete...all at my fingertips.

Except I hate to fly. Hate might not be a strong enough word for my feelings about flying. If I can avoid getting stuffed into that little tube with hundreds of other people and screaming kids, I am going to do it every chance I get and twice on Sunday. It would probably embarrass my husband if it were known how many miles we log in our car so I can avoid any part of the airport other than the outside drop-off and pick-up lanes.

This is not news to my husband. As newlyweds we left very early the day after our wedding to honeymoon in Jamaica. The first leg of the flight to the Miami airport was not too bad, but the idea of getting back into a plane and heading to Jamaica was almost more than I could stand. My poor husband sat with me in that terminal asking if I was going to do this or if we were going to need to rent a car and drive back to Jacksonville. After a very long pep talk with myself, I went and bought the most expensive little pack of Dramamine (seriously, I think I could have bought the equivalent amount of pot or some other illegal drug for what I paid for it!) and managed to get on the plane. There was a debate if we would be boating home, but I made it both there and back on an airplane.

I am surprisingly not that rare of a bird. There are several of my pilot wife friends that have the same "I would rather walk for the next 18 hours in high heels than get on an airplane" thoughts as I do. Any other white-knuckle flyers out there?

No Hubby Bashing

As I start this blog there are many things running through my head of posts I want to write, various avenues I want to talk about and things I want to avoid. One of the few concrete ideas for this blog is what it is not, this will not be a platform for me to bash and be disrespectful to my husband. That is not the intent of this blog, sometimes the line between teasing and bashing becomes a little blurred and I welcome any comments should I need to change direction. My husband will also be able to tell his side or have me remove something. I may also be hard on the airlines and the Navy, but please understand, I am so thankful for what they do provide for us.

I am someone who thrives on order, routine and did I mention that I love lists? I like knowing that on Mondays my daughter has swim team, which days I have carpool, even what days I do various cleaning tasks. Neither the military or airlines seems to understand this need in me, or they just choose to disregard it (I keep telling my hubby he needs to talk to the big guys about this!). This blog is sort of my attempt to make something good out of the parts of my husband's career I don't like  too much. It is much easier to deal with an exploding water heater when I can think of it as more fodder for the blog rather than another mini-crisis to handle by myself. (Do you know how hard it is to try to get directions via text when you are standing in water?)

Okay, enough seriousness, just wanted to get my disclaimer out there!

Handywoman in Training

I am now fairly confident that all mechanical appliances, or large objects that have the ability to spew water or other messy items, are completely tapped into my husband's travel schedule. When he is home most appliances behave and work as they should. I place food in the microwave, hit the amount of time I need, push start, and it works like a charm. My husband leaves the country and same microwave will not shut off when the door is open. I am now sporting a pretty good tan and hoping not to start glowing anytime soon.

Last trip my husband headed down to South America and all was well. The following morning I woke up, opened the garage door to go to church and low and behold we have a new, indoor swimming pool. This would be a great addition to our home provided all swimmers get the necessary tetanus shots before entering the pool and we no longer desire hot water for cleaning and bathing. A lot of money later, we now have hot water and a tankless water heater. There will be no more spewing water in my garage!

He is off on a trip now and the count is one new condenser motor for the A/C at our rental house and some repair work for the back screen door. Unfortunately, it is still early in his trip. The A/C repair was an easy fix for the HVAC man and I have to admit to some entertainment value with the screen door damage. We have a "phantom" screen door on the back of the house. For reasons unknown, our builder thought putting a 24" wide patio door on the back made sense (have you ever tried to carry a tray of food through a hobbit hole?) Our new dog is not familiar with the screen door and at 57 pounds managed to send that baby right off the tracks. The look on his face might have caused me to need to sit down due to laughter. The dog has recovered from the mishap, the screen door needs some serious rehabilitation or possibly last rites.

Do these things happen to others or did Murphy take a room in our house and not even bother to offer me rent money?

The Beginning

Hello! I am an 80's child and like most girls watched Top Gun more times than was probably good for me. Add to that one of my favorite uncle's being a Navy pilot and it is safe to say that my husband's profession is not much of a surprise.

In 2002 I married my own Navy pilot and realized, gasp!, Hollywood lied! Somehow the movie is not very clear on how many moves you will get to do, and do alone if your husband is able to consistently pay off scheduling to never be home for a move. They failed to mention the 6-month deployments. Oh, and those white uniforms that look so good, they forgot to tell you how you will spend the hours before he needs his Chokers scrambling throughout the house looking for various pieces and parts and being so thankful you remembered to pick said uniform up from the dry cleaner!

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love my pilot and we have had a great journey together both in the active Navy and now Navy Reserves, but there are times when I no longer want to here words like flight, Navy, uniforms, airline, crew scheduling, and without question the word deployment!

In case our life was not crazy enough, he left active duty and is now a commercial pilot and in the Reserves. That 2 days a month and 2 weeks a year thing....right, so not true! Now there are 2 sets of uniform parts and pieces to hope are all accounted for at the right times. I have no idea what the man will do when he retires from the airlines and Navy, someone has been telling him what to wear since he was 18 years old. What may be more shocking for him, there will not be velcro on his clothes!  Yikes!

Thanks for listening to me ramble about our lives. I am hoping that this blog allows me to share some of the ups and downs of our life and a place to revisit when things are rough and I need a laugh!