Military Spouse Appreciation Day

Today is Military Spouse Appreciation Day.  In 1984 President Ronald Reagan proclaimed that the Friday before Mother's Day  was to be designated at Military Spouse Appreciation Day.

In all the years that I've been married to soldier not once has this day been celebrated.  Why?  Well I guess its because my spouse never knew about it.  Or if he did he had no clue on how to show his appreciation of what I do for him and us. 

While my husband took his oath I did not.  I was inducted into the military through the backdoor. What do I do?  Well I support him.  I cook, bake, clean, manage finances, and when he is deployed I do everything else that I humanly can to make sure he will be able to keep his mind set on his mission.

So today all I'm asking for is some appreciation from him.  No I don't want a dinner out.  That would be for us.  I want something for me alone.  I'd like him to write me a letter or note telling me why he appreciates what I do for him.  It costs nothing but his time and it will mean the world to me.  Heck I might even frame it so I can see it daily as a reminder of why I do what I do for him.  Especially when things get tough and I'm not liking where our lives are going that letter would make me pause and re-evaluate my anger.

I love my husband.  I love him for all that he is and who he will become as we grow old together.  The rest is just stuff that I will accept as bumps in the road of our life path.

Will I be upset if he forgets this day?  Maybe.  But not for long.  I can't stay angry at him for long.  He has a demanding job.  He has forgotten to celebrate other dates like anniversaries and birthdays.   But there are always reasons why that happens.  Sometimes its because he is in another country and the time difference makes it so he doesn't realize when those special days have passed.  Easily enough forgiven.

For now I'll wait to see just how he is going to show his appreciation of me.

Shopping With The Spouse

Today my husband and I went shopping.  We started off at a bookstore.  I love to buy used books especially when I can trade in my old ones.  My spouse heads off to the Sci-fi section, I head to the classics then over to the cookbooks, romance and finally end up in the Sci-fi section myself.  I enjoy Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sci-fi novels as much as I enjoy any other genre.


Next stop is to a hardware store to look for a replacement lawn mower blade for our inherited Briggs and Stratton.  No luck at the hardware store.  We decided to drive to the next town over and get a blade at the same place we've been purchasing replacement parts for this mower.  But before we head out to the next town over we stop at a Bed Bath and Beyond because I wanted to purchase new bed sheets.  Much to my amazement bed sheets are now coming with warranties included in the purchase price.  I thought only electronics and appliances had warranties.  Less than an hour in the store and we are headed to lunch at, of all places, a pancake house.  My spouse had already had an egg mess for breakfast but he was craving pancakes and an omelet.  This place was busy today.  It actually took an hour to get our food.

 With lunch under our belts we headed out to the lawn mower and go-kart repair place for the lawn mower blade replacement.  We get there and find out our much damaged blade is a craftsman.  I'll have to ask my manflesh later if he thinks it might have a warranty on that too.  Still chuckling thinking of warrantied sheets .

Our shopping trips are still not done.  Off we go again after a quick trip home to drop off the packages and lawn mower blade.  We stop by the dry cleaner and seamstress shop to pick up his class A jacket.  He had to have more patches sewn on; this time combat and service stripes.  After securing his jacket in the suv we drive off to a sporting goods store.  Now we are getting to the promised land, well at least for my spouse.  I had asked him last night if he wanted a firearm for a holiday gift.  Of course he loved that idea.  So this turned into a fact finding trip and not a purchasing trip unless you count the fudge we bought at the store.  We were at the hand gun counter for no less than two hours.  I looked at my watch after he walked away from the counter and said, "Hun, did you realize its almost 6 o'clock?".  Time to eat dinner and so I'm keeping this post today short and rather boring.

Time to get the frozen pizza into the oven.  Maybe we'll find something good on the television tonight or maybe we'll just pop in a dvd.

Forgive my typos and punctuation error...I'm tired.

Beginnings

Since this is the very first posting to my blog I figured that I would introduce myself a bit for those that actually decide to read this blog, here goes nothing.

I'm an Army Wife.  Yup, that's right.  I've been an Army Wife now for just over three years and yes I'm counting.  No, I'm not counting the days until my husband leaves the Army (I'm married to a great guy that wants to make a career of this job) but I am counting the days so to speak with the experiences and friends I've made over the past three years,  five months and several days.  I won't give the exact dates or names in this blog as I need to remember the rules of PERSEC and OPSEC.  Yeah, okay, sure.  But truly its something as an Army Wife that I need to remember so that others are not put into harm's way.

I've been married for a touch over five years and most of that five years has been spent apart from my spouse.  Army life isn't easy by no means on any family member whether its the spouse sitting at home dreading that phone call that tells you your spouse has been injured or if you are the parent of a soldier hoping for some communication from your child letting you know they are alive and well.  But there are the joys of being part of the Army family too.

In this blog I will be hopefully telling my readers more about both ends of the Army life.  I will include even the mundane part as well as the exciting bits as most of the Army life is just the ordinary routine.

Before I get too sidetracked I'll give you bit more about me besides the obvious that I'm an Army Wife which means I'm a female.  lol duh!  I'm also approaching middle age fast, trying to start a family and coping with my disabilities as well as trying to maintain an air of normalcy.

I'm going to have typos and grammatical mistakes I just ask that you readers bear with me.  Hopefully you'll laugh with me, cheer me on and geez, I hope you don't cry but I can't promise a single thing as Army life has its ups and down.