The last few days...

It is a well known fact in MilSpouse circles that the last few days of a deployment are not made up of 24 hour days. They are, in fact, approximately 240 hours long...each. Okay, okay, maybe that's an exaggeration but really it's not much of one. As busy as we are with school and sports and the general chaos of two small boys, the days are draaaaaaaggggging. If today were any other, normal day it would be about 8pm with all that I've done already. But noooooo it's instead barely 1:30.

Before the hubs goes anywhere when he'll be gone for more than a few days, I slack off on the house things - I'm not alone. Every spouse I know does too. Not much of a shocker, I mean who really wants to be doing laundry and vacuuming when your loved one is packing to leave for weeks or months at a time. Of course you want to spend every minute just being together. Once he leaves I spend an hour or two or day catatonic on the couch cuddling with my boyos. Then I start cleaning to make up for all that I've ignored and just to be DOING something. Like if I'm busy time will go faster. In the beginning it sort of does.

We're at the very tail end of a year long deployment. Knowing that I'll once again be ignoring all but the basics of housework, I've been cleaning like crazy. Hoping that the time will pass faster. Keeping myself physically occupied. Like its a way to prove "Look I'm ok! Look I didn't sit on my ass for the last 12 months" even though he knows that I didn't. I'm cleaning things that I know for a fact he won't care about or notice, some things that don't necessarily even need to be cleaned but it makes me feel better. It a way of dealing with the homecoming anxiety in a productive way. By this time I should be an expert, I'm one of the older more experienced wives but I don't feel that way. I know what to expect, I know that no matter what there's an adjustment to having him home again, that there are always little conflicts, stresses. Knowing doesn't make any of it easier. If anything its making me clean harder as if to prove just how "ok" I am. Honestly I am ok. It hasn't been an easy year and we've had our share of trauma as well as joy. But it's over...well almost anyways.

Now I think I need to go vacuum my ceiling fans....