Today’s thankful post is easy. I am thankful for everyone who has served our country in the armed forces. I am proud to count so many people in my life as veterans – both my grandfathers, my step-grandfather, my grandmother, my father, and my best friend are all veterans, and my husband is about to start his 13th year as active duty Navy.

Thank you for your selflessness, thank you for your sacrifices, thank you for your commitment, thank you for your bravery.

My Grandpa (the one who just passed away this week) in his Navy days

My dad in his Coast Guard uniform.

Evan's pinning (the day he was promoted to chief)

Little Evan in Daddy's hat the day Daddy re-enlisted

Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you.

So this morning, we all put on our Sunday best and went down to the Navy base, where E solemnly swore “that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.”

So help him God.

E gets to spend the next 5 years at the beck and call of the US Government and I got a nice certificate that thanked me for my service. Little Evan got one too.

To celebrate we went down to Mystic.

Splashed in some puddles

Got a family picture with E in uniform

We went to buy my dream stroller (UppaBaby, baby!) but the people at the store were…less than knowledgeable. I felt sort of like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman – I am in your store, trying to spend obscene amounts of money with very little effort on your part, and yet you can’t be bothered to help? BIG MISTAKE. HUGE.

It was really confusing. We looked totally respectable and not at all hooker-ish. I’m visibly pregnant & carrying a toddler, so I’m obviously not lost. The lady BOTH sales women were helping was buying $30 worth of dresses. No one can stop for a second to help me with a $800 stroller? (Does that sound SUPER bitchy and entitled? Yeah, probably.)

Finally, they called the owner who assured me I could have my stroller, on sale, with all the parts by Sunday.

So boo and yah!

Since E is shockingly unexcited by dropping wads of cash on a stroller (geez, why not dude?), we went down to Clyde’s Cider Mill to get him a little present of his own.

Cinnamon sugar donuts and a bottle of hard cider. There are no pictures because we inhaled the donuts too fast and I told E he couldn’t drink the cider until after noon. We’re classy like that.

And now we’re spending the rest of the day doing errands and being lazy while the weather decides if it’s going to be sunny and warmish or rainy, windy and cold. Either way, it’s been a good day already.

Happy Re-Enlistment E! Your family & your country appreciates everything you do for us!

Since I don’t bring up E’s career very often, a quick sum-up so this post makes sense to everyone: My husband is a Chief Petty Officer in the Navy and is mostly assigned to nuclear submarines although he’s currently on shore duty. In 2012 he has to go back to a sub.

It looks like E is going to re-enlist again in a few months really soon in October, meaning he is definitely in the Navy for the long haul. We knew he would be re-enlisting at least one more time the LAST time he did it (which seems like just yesterday but was apparently 2 years ago)(having a baby can really make time fly y’all)(I bet you’ve never heard THAT before) because it put him over 10 years, the halfway point. After 20 years of military service you get to keep certain benefits – a pension, base privileges, cheap health care – forever.

Since he enlisted when he was 19, my husband is going to retire at age 39.

To be fair, it’s only a retirement from his first job. He’ll probably find something nuclear power related to do in the civilian world and put in another 20 or 30 years before we get to sell the house, buy a yacht and abandon our children travel the world. But maybe, instead of getting a job where he has to carry a briefcase and wear a tie and commute every day, we’ll start a business. Or buy a bar. Or move to rural Tennessee and live on $1000 a month plus whatever I can make blogging working at Walmart. The thought of a life that boring and normal makes me giddy and lightheaded.

But before we can start making plans like that we have to make it through the next 10 years of Navy life. We will have to move – probably several times. E will be deployed – probably several times. We’ll have to sell this house – the house I love, the house my babies came home to – in a market that means we’ll be lucky if we get out without having to bring money to closing. Forget getting back any of the cash we’ve already put into it. And even more than the material inconvenience of leaving, I cannot even begin to imagine my life without the friends/support system/general awesomeness I have here. In fact, I’m going to have to stop thinking about it right now or risk getting all sweaty and shaky and panicky. Starting over – even after 28 continuous years of experience starting over – is HARD.

To be 100% candid, re-enlisting also comes with a bonus – as in dollars – that would mean our plans to turn the third floor junk room into a guest room (and perhaps the guest room into a second nursery) could happen in the foreseeable future rather than “some day” and our “four bedroom” house could actually be sold as a 4-bedroom house. It would also mean canceling cable is as far as our drastic budget cuts have to go – no buying cans from the dented pile, veggies from the bruised cart of bread from the thrift store (true story: as a kid I thought the Hostess Thrift Shop was where they sold used donuts and muffins). That kind of financial security also makes me giddy and sort of lightheaded.

So there’s an upside to go with the downside. And truthfully, not having to worry about sudden unemployment or layoffs or downsizing or whatever not-at-all helpful euphemism companies are using these days is such a blessing. So I’m going to think about the good parts instead of the maybe-in-a-little-whiles.

Another upside? The uniforms. Oh, yes.

From the day E was pinned (promoted) to Chief

One of the Navy Balls - I was 3 or 4 months pregnant

E doing his best Top Gun impression (I'm still pregnant)

Sailor Sandwich! Tell me you're not jealous.

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So the good news is we won’t be moving this year. The bad news is we won’t be moving this year because E didn’t get selected for Limited Duty Officer by the Navy. Being passed up for LDO sucks, but it sucks extra hard because I know he feels like it’s a direct judgment of his worth as a person. Which I think it RIDICULOUS because he’s amazingly good at his job, including all the itty bitty meaningless hoops the military loves to make people jump through – like always saying numbers a certain way or rechecking a valve you checked literally 30 seconds ago just because it’s a step in the procedure manual. He knows that shit inside and out. His boss got a call from another captain this week just to let him know how awesome E is and how lucky the office is to have him. And yet some guys he’s never met down in Washington DC decided he wasn’t ready to be an LDO based on a few pieces of paper and one interview. I’m so pissed on his behalf I want to punch someone and scream profanity in their stupid faces.

Last year when he didn’t get selected, I wrote a blog post for Military Spouse magazine (which seems to have disappeared into the dark void of the internets Found it) about how even though I was sad for him I was super relieved not to be uprooting our life right then. I was 8 months pregnant, the housing market had just tanked, we were kind of broke, and I was totally unprepared to start over in a new city in a new state. I got a few positive comments about how hard being a military wife can be sometimes, but one asshole wrote a jerk-off post about how I was a terrible person for even THINKING there was an upside to not getting selected, let alone writing about it on the internet. He said my selfish attitude was probably to blame and called me everything besides a traitor to our armed services. Charming and helpful all around.

This time, my disappointment on E’s behalf is greater than my desire not to upset our lives. Even though his selection would mean an even more difficult move, leaving so many more friends, losing all my real-life support, and still be a pain in the ass financially, I know how much he wanted it. How much he DESERVED it. And I am genuinely disappointed that the Navy doesn’t appreciate all his hard work. I guess I’ll just have to make sure he knows I do…until we go through this whole damn mess again next February.

I don’t talk much about E’s job* here, for a couple of reasons. First of all, I don’t want to get him in trouble by running my mouth and accidentally giving away something that could compromise national security. (Do I really know anything that important? I could tell you but then I’d have to kill you.) (Sorry, military joke.) Secondly, his job’s not really a big part of our lives right now. Well, not a bigger part of our lives than a normal civilian’s job is – you go there in the morning, you sit at a desk, you go to boring meetings, you come home for dinner, rinse, repeat. The fact that he wears a uniform and answers to people named Lieutenant and Admiral doesn’t matter so much while he’s on shore duty instead of attached to a submarine.

But in a few weeks our contented life of Daddy being home to tuck the baby in at night may change. Last fall, E applied to be a Limited Duty Officer – which is a great career decision for a lot of reasons – and we find out the results in February.  If he’s picked up it would mean a move followed by at least one deployment, probably on an aircraft carrier (Our friend who was picked up and commissioned this past spring is currently on the Carl Vinson helping with the relief effort in Haiti)…followed by several more moves and probably more deployments.  I wouldn’t be the first woman to become a single mother** because of the Navy but it’s certainly not something I’m looking forward to with all the joy and excitement of Christmas morning.

The whole situation is one big question mark until after we hear the LDO results but it’s all I can think about. There are a ton of if’s going on right now and I hate ifs. IF E gets picked up. IF he gets the job path he’s hoping for. IF they transfer us. IF we have to sell the house. IF we can’t sell the house because of the stupid housing market. IF we get to choose where we want to go. IF he’s going to be at sea for 6 months. IF we plan to expand our family again in the next two years. IF IF IF IF.

All I know for sure is IF we have to leave Connecticut I’m going to be more upset than I’ve ever been about a move before. It’s so nice to know how to get to the mall and the doctor’s office and the post office and the other post office that actually has parking and to know which mechanic won’t rip me off and where to get a bridesmaid’s dress fitted and where to buy fresh pasta and who makes the best local wine. Learning all those things in a new place is exhausting, even more so now that I also need to know all the baby related stuff too – pediatricians and 24-hour pharmacies and playgrounds and restaurants where no one complains about a few coasters thrown on the floor and maybe a screaming fit or two. I like it here, New England weather and all and will be very sad to leave.

*E’s job: He’s a Chief Petty Officer (E-7) who runs nuclear reactors on fast-attack submarines. Currently working at Electric Boat to help coordinate construction and repair work between the shipyard and the Navy.

**I hate using the term single mother because having a husband who’s away at sea is in NO WAY like being an actual single mother. I can stay home without working and still pay my bills – not to mention the health insurance benefits. But I can’t think of a better term right now. Suggestions welcome.