Pre-Deployment Leave and When He Leaves for Deployment

Hello, Hellooooo! I'm aliiiiive! Nothing like pre-deployment leave to knock my blogging out of whack, huh? But I'm back, I'm back! At least it wasn't as long of a lull as the last one.

Habibi, the Kiddo and I at City Park

So we went back home to New Orleans for pre-deployment leave to see our friends and family, visit old familiar places and eat long-missed foods you couldn't find in El Paso if you tried... 


We had family parties with aunts and uncles and cousins and siblings, group outings to the French Quarter, the Riverwalk, the Aquarium and an ENTIRE DAY at Blue Bayou Waterpark, complete with second degree sunburn (I looked like a Gremlin thrown into sunlight- awful burns and blisters)! We were also blessed with a couple of thunder storms and some rain! (I had to laugh because my Momma's wish- that our visit would end the drought conditions in NOLA- came true after all!)

Habibi with a crawdad!

Admittedly, there were still some lulls during leave where I was frustrated and just wanted to hurry up and be back in EP. Yes, really. A couple of times we found ourselves camped out on my Momma's couch with nothing to do and nobody to see because, well... There seems to be this unwritten rule somewhere that says when your friends fly 1,150 miles home to visit- you have to be unavailable and then write them a Facebook message about how hurt you are that they made no effort to see you when they flew in. Because, you know, 1,150 miles wasn't far enough. It turns out, we're not the only family to deal with this during leave. It's a pretty common problem, particularly among military families. Friends (and family, even!), if you KNOW your friends are coming in to visit and you want to see them- MAKE TIME! It won't kill you to take ONE DAY off of work to spend with them, considering you probably won't see them again for a year or more. Ugh. 

Habibi and the Kiddo, taking a swim!

Still, all in all, it was a pleasant visit and by the very end the three of us were ready to be back home in El Paso and back to our normal routine.


BY THE WAY, I would like to mention that Habibi totally teased me because TSA grabbed me out of line both TO and FROM New Orleans and put me in the box for additional screening. To say the X-Ray machine freaked me out was an understatement. I was ready to scream. Habibi said I follow the terrorist description. At first, I was offended... Until he said "You've got such gorgeous curves, you must be packin'!" HA! Still, it was either coincidence or I really set off some kind of crazy flag. It's like they can tell which people will have a meltdown if you put them in the box. Mental note for future flights: Try not to look like a psycho.

Relaxing on a swing at City Park

After our flight was delayed TWICE and the entire concourse got held up because some crazy person literally RAN through the security checkpoint and was being hunted down- at which point nobody was allowed to move (try THAT with a five year old) or go to their terminals while they shut down the exits- we were compensated with free food at the terminal and free liquor on the flight (Can you guess who had three mini-bottles of wine?) and we made it home just in time for Habibi to check in. Phew! We went home and collapsed in our clothes- best night's sleep EVER. I don't know what it is about flights, but they make me EXHAUSTED because, you know, all of that SITTING we do.

Habibi and the Kiddo being silly!

Habibi ended up having to go right back to work the next morning- but he came home with a surprise. A piece of paper with lots of jumble Army jargon on it. Orders. I wasn't sure how to react. I read through them, put them down, picked them up, read through them again... and again... and again. I'd expected myself to have some sort of snap or something... cry or whatever. But it just didn't feel real. That's a big deal with me; nothing is ever real until it happens. I suppose it's my inner cynic to keep me from freaking out. So after a while I handed him his papers back and just... continued on as usual.


Over the next week, I started to see posts from my friends in our group; sad, upset, terrified, heartbroken posts about their husbands receiving their orders and how everything was "becoming real for them." I started to wonder... Why didn't it hit ME like that? Is it going to just sneak up on me and explode a-la Dane Cook's Mental Terrorist? Or am I just not going to crack until the day my husband is really gone? Will it be when we're alone in the car, on our way home from our Battalion Ball? Will it be on post, when we're making arrangements and signing forms for Living Wills and Power of Attorney? Maybe I won't break down until 5 o' clock passes and he doesn't walk through the door that first night. I don't know. I tried to force myself to get upset, discussing the deployment with Habibi so that maybe the floodgates will just open wide and everything will come out. But even that doesn't seem to work for me. I guess I'll just have to wait and see when the other shoe drops.