I’ve been thinking a lot about CU’s deployment today. First, when I was at the gym this morning…it brought back really strange, surreal memories of “this time last January.” This time last January, I was beginning my big project to lose ten pounds before he got home (I did it, and kept it all off…till my knee went out and then I sprained my toe and workouts weren’t gonna happen…anyhoo…) and was going to the gym every morning after he and I got off the phone.

This morning, I woke up alone, talked to CU and then went to the gym…I think the temperature was about the same as it was this time last year, too. Deja vu. When I was at the gym, a song started playing on my Shuffle that I listened to a lot when CU was gone. It’s a pretty inocuous song usually now, but with him not being here, and me being at the gym…and eating alone and sleeping alone…well, Snarkwife got a little melancholy. It was strange. I almost choked up at the gym…for no other reason except how much I was missing him this time last year unexpectedly punched me in the gut.

Then when I got home and CU called me from the St. Louis, then Atlanta airports…all was well again.

On top of all that, I have a couple of blog friends right now who are dancing the deployment dance with their husbands, and my heart just aches for them because I can both sympathize and empathize. I get all practical and clinical and pragmatic when I talk about it to (or with) them and always feel so funky about it all.

I never understood how military wives could make it a month, 3 months, 6 months or a year without their husbands…until I did it myself. The experience is liberating, and empowering…but it also alternates between 10 different kinds of sucky and 7 different kinds of miserable.

Then one day, you take a look at the calendar and you’re simply amazed it’s been nearly 22 months since you found out he was leaving. Time’s a strange, strange thing. The stranger (although not totally unsurprising) thing…it only took 21 months for the Army to process his 3 resignation requests. Ha!

And…now that he’s been back for 8 months…I guess that’s all I’m going to have to say on that.