A deployment is an interesting thing. Even though most of us are accustomed to surviving (and even thriving) while our service member is away, and even though we are more than capable of handling things on our own…we often find ourselves shaking our head over the things that seem to worry us or the downright silly things we do.
We have all heard of the Deployment Curse; an appliance will explode, a rodent will find it’s way into your shower, or the car will decide to break down…within days (okay, sometimes minutes) after your service member leaves.
But even when nothing major is happening, we find ourselves doing some things that we might not normally do…and we think it’s healthy to laugh at ourselves once in a while. A group of our amazing contributors put their heads together and shared some of the silly things they have done during deployment. What would you add to this list?
- Worrying that your spouse will see a messy house in the background on Skype. In reality, they are just happy to see your face and talk to the kids!
- Lock all the keys, for the house and the vehicles, in the car. On the way to work.
- Eat popcorn for dinner. For a week.
- Put a full face of makeup on at 3am for a Skype date.
- Shave your legs. Because really, what is the point?
- Take 1000 selfies, just to get the perfect one to send to your service member. Please tell me I am not the only one!
- Get a little too crazy with Pinterest…
- Forget to start your service member’s car until the day before Homecoming…and have to shell out maintenance money you weren’t expecting.
- Forget to take the trash out, on the correct day, three weeks in a row.
- Spend weeks finding that perfect homecoming outfit, then realizing you could have worn a brown paper bag.
- Thinking that the first homecoming date the command gives you will stick. Or the second… or the tenth.
- Get upset because another spouse is getting a phone call from their service member every day…and you are not.
- Pay the same bill twice, or worse…forget to pay it all together.
- Forget to winterize the house and the outside pipes freeze!
- Fail to recognize the power of Murphy’s Law…it will get you!
- Insist on redecorating or rehabbing the house so that it will be “done” for homecoming. Get halfway through, get fed up and begin a frantic effort to make it “presentable” 5 days before they are scheduled to return.
- Forget you meant to lose 20 pounds this time around, and then starve yourself the week before Homecoming.
- Find that one care package you swore the post office lost, in your trunk…3 days after they return home.
- Watch any movie with a military or love-story plot.
- Spend a crazy amount of money on a waterproof case, so you can shower WITH the phone.
- Accidentally text your friend that sexy message meant for your service member who you miss terribly.
- Make a promise to eat healthy…and then realize that probably won’t happen unless it is fermented grapes.
- Think it’s ever a good idea to listen to ANY Country Music Song
- Buy their cologne to spray the pillows and t-shirts while they are gone.
- Forget that we are human, we might not always handle every single thing with grace…and that is okay!
Read Next: Deployment Battle Plan
Contributors: Morgan Slade, Erin Whitehead, Joy Draper, Rachel Graven, Ashley Frisch, MJ Boice, Alicia Hinds Ward, and Cassandra Bratcher