• 3am Wednesday morning my internet went down and took me an hour to fix.
• 4am Wednesday morning I got back online, only to find i’d missed my husband by 50 minutes. The first time since he left.
• Yesterday I couldn’t breathe, and no word from him.
• This morning, woke up to dog crate full of Daisy puke, and still haven’t heard from him.

I hate this.

Many random things to spit out here…

• Talked to hubby this morning. His internet is still not fixed, so we were limited on time. However, that thing he said yesterday was him joking, which he needs to not try doing when he’s in a crabby mood. The tone didn’t come across to me correctly, and I took it wrong. Phew. What a relief that was. I’m baking this week, and hoping to find a way to send him some nummies. I finally found a banana bread recipe that doesn’t take sour cream, so I’m going to send that, and some banana fudge nut brownies.
• I’m enjoying baking from scratch. I have so many recipes I want to try. I made banana bread for us today by accident. I was going to make the sour cream free version for Hunny, but realized too late I was looking at the wrong recipe. Oops. I’ll make his tomorrow along with the brownies.
• The school week has been going well. Homework has been getting done with only one argument per child thus far. Lyssa seems to have a good grasp of math this year, let’s hope it keeps up as it gets harder.  Brenna came home with her first extra credit grade today. Both have been doing their chores without too much complaint, but I’m sticking with it. No outside play with friends until chores and homework are done. Eventually I hope they’ll just accept that without being reminded. Good habits would be nice.
• Didn’t do too much today, took off with Lizz for a bit to share in her very strange day. We’re still trying to figure out if the snack shack in the lemon lo is just resting there or if it will actually be opening here on base.

• Secretary Rumsfeld is coming Saturday. I don’t like him much. It has nothing to do with this extension though. He just did what the command on the ground over there said they needed. It’s more to do with the way he comes off in his press conferences. Rather condescending and arrogant in the way he answers questions. As if the person asking has an iq equal to a garden slug. But he’s making the effort to be here, so I’ll go. Besides, it ought to be interesting to see if some of the BS that has been given to other officials will be leveled at him too. It’s gotten pretty ugly at some of these things. I’m betting he’ll do a speech and leave rather than a question answer session. If not, I wouldn’t want to be him…lol!

Exactly how I feel about this. Thanks Sherry for pointing this article out!!

Military spouses are warriors on the homefront

By Michelle Cuthrell
Published August 4, 2006

I didnâ™t think I would need my armor this quickly.

After twelve months of deployment, I had already tucked it away in my storage closet, right next to the blue star banner and the âœHalf My Heart is in Iraqâ magnet that used to grace my car.

But when I received the news last Wednesday that my husbandâ™s unit would be extended in Iraq for an additional four months, I realized that the cutesy white welcome home dress and the dainty little tissue Iâ™d stuffed in my purse just werenâ™t going to cut it. If I was going to survive, Iâ™d have to shift gears. And Iâ™d have to do it fast.

One week later, Iâ™m back in my armor and ready to go. Bring on the extension. The warrior has returned.

But not without a few fresh battle wounds.

First, I fought with the cruise line with which we had booked our September Hawaii vacation. They offered a partial refund, and made me file an insurance claim to collect the rest. Only the insurance company told me that they were pretty sure they didnâ™t cover military extensions and deployments, even though three different customer service representatives told me they did when I purchased the insurance in June. I told the man on the phone that that wasnâ™t very nice of him, and then, like any mature wife, called my daddy and told on him.

Then, I had to break the news to my husbandâ™s best friend that no, Matt would now not be home in time to be the best man in his October wedding, even though CJ had already moved the date of his wedding once to accommodate my husbandâ™s deployment schedule. But thatâ™s okay. We only named our child after this man. Iâ™m sure heâ™ll get over it someday.

I spent the rest of Friday afternoon transforming my August calendar into a grid of scratches and scribbles as I marked off all the events I had so anticipated in August â“from the military ball (and my first hair up-do appointment in years!) to the medical platoonâ™s welcome home barbecue.

Of course, after dealing with the really big items, I then had to tackle the minor situations that had arisen from this new extension. Like the fact that Iâ™d already given my pastor two weeksâ™ notice at my church job and now had to figure out the best way to go groveling back. And the fact that I now was completely unprepared to tackle another Alaskan winter.

Mental note: Donâ™t sell your car extension cords, winter coats or emergency gas cans at a garage sale the weekend before your husband is supposed to return from Iraq simply because the Army tells you you should be changing stations by October. You might just want them back when you realize that, despite any begging, pleading or bribing you might do, you are indeed going to be spending an entire third winter in freezing Fairbanks. By yourself. Without anyone to go start your car when itâ™s 40 degrees below zero.

Check.

The little prom princess in the white welcome home dress just wasnâ™t able to handle all these little issues and concerns. But the new warrior has definitely got it covered.

You donâ™t marry a fighter without a soldier somewhere inside yourself. Itâ™s just that we spouses wage war on a different battlefield. We are soldiers in our homes, fighting forward as single parents and geographical bachelorettes. We are soldiers in our faith, leaning on God completely because we donâ™t have the strength to do this alone. And we are soldiers in our marriage, carrying on, battle after battle, until we get the victory of uniting with our loved ones once again.

We do it with a passion, and we do it with persistence, for the spouses we love and the country we, too, serve.

Weâ™re fighters. Weâ™re survivors. We are military wives.

Michelle Cuthrell is a local freelance writer. Her columns about life as a military spouse at Fort Wainwright will appear while her husband, a lieutenant with the 2-1 Infantry Battalion, is deployed with the 172nd Stryker Brigade.

This article may be accessed online at http://newsminer.com/2006/08/04/1322/.
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