Military Spouse Appreciation Day –Ahh — finally, a day, one miraculous day, to commemorate the hard work and dedication of Military Spouses stationed around the world.
A day where a military spouse can walk into any government establishment and not be required to have their sponsor’s power of attorney in hand. A day where everything runs smoothly, people tip their hats to us and we all get free ice cream and massages and job interviews, and no one calls us derogatory names (like dependapotumus or bremerlos) as an homage to our figures.
A day where the skies part, Murphy’s Law takes a hike, and our stress levels are minimized…
Just kidding, Military Spouse Appreciation day is a day like any other day.
You need to get your ass up because the packers said they will be there sometime between 8:00 am and next Thursday and you need to empty your trashcans because they WILL pack them full of trash. Also, all children have pink eye, your husband has no comms–wherever he may be, and you may be in need of medical attention.
It’s a day like any other–which is why I asked some of those in my amazing village to contribute their most shareable Murphy’s Law stories and their best alcoholic beverage pairing to wash it all down with. HEAR! HEAR! Military Spouses, gather ‘round and laugh with us, as we hear classic tales of things that may go awry during the most stressful times this military life has to offer….
In the midst of a very stressful overseas move to Japan, my son Benton found it a fitting time to break his arm. When we were in the midst of leaving Japan, he, again, broke the same arm. Not only was it enough to choose those two stressful times to break his arm, he also found it fitting to break his arm shortly after his father deployed to Afghanistan. Same arm. All. Three. Times.
I chose to pair this situation (all three arm breaks) with a nice vodka tonic, extra lime, to wash it all down–once all the children went to bed, of course.
Aurelia Benton McMahon
My husband and I decided that it would be really cool to bring back the ultimate souvenir from our time in Yokosuka, Japan: a third child. I peed on a stick, but it was negative, while refusing to believe that my Mexican fertile ancestors had let me down, I scheduled an appointment. The doctor confirmed my suspicions and that I was in-fact pregnant. But that really cool third child souvenir was a twofer. I would be bringing back a souvenir pair: twins!
At this appointment I also found out that a twin pregnancy in Yokosuka meant that I was considered “high-risk.” My husband deployed, I was given news I would have to be medevac’d to San Diego to birth my babies, alone. The base informed me that my children (my daughter 3, and my son 6) would have to stay behind with “friends” or “neighbors” while I went back to a different continent to birth my twins. Needless to say, after a very heated exchange and explaining to the Navy that I had only been in Japan a short time, not long enough to trust anyone with my kids for a few months–the kids were allowed to fly with me to San Diego.
I paired this situation with NOTHING. Because PREGNANT.
Arlene Caraway (that crazy Mexican with all the kids)
The cool thing about IVF (in vitro fertilization) is that you can get pregnant while your husband is deployed. Which is what happened to us while living abroad in Rota, Spain. Once the hubs returned home from his deployment to bask in our pregnancy, I was at 28 weeks; he told me we would be PCSing back to the States from Rota a few weeks later. This was all then followed by: “oh, by the way, I’ll be deploying straight away for ten months.”
So, at 32 weeks we packed up three separate shipments, shipped a car, I moved in with my family thousands of miles away, and said a very tearful goodbye to my baby’s daddy. A couple of months later, I made a phone call to a carrier sitting in a gulf a world away to let him know that I was on the way to the hospital to welcome our daughter to the world. The first time he saw our daughter was through an iPad, not exactly what I had imagined for us when we started trying to get pregnant years earlier.
Now what does starting a family and figuring out this parenting-a-newborn business alone pair well with, you ask? Donuts and quinoa…but only because vodka is frowned upon while nursing.
Lindsey Schaller
The perils of a dreaded stomach bug whilst alone during a deployment. Why does the stomach bug always hit when you are solo parenting? My three young crewmembers, contracting very communicable viruses from their playmates, left loads of infectious vomit (and laundry) for me to handle…alone. The crew, unable to deposit their vomit in the head, left the scene in the house looking like the aftermath of a good frat party. And of course, the CO succumbed to the crew’s illness days later while still having to tend to the crewmember’s needs.
Drink of Choice (post vomiting, of course): keg beer in a red Solo Cup
Kari Delongpre
My funniest deployment edition of Murphy’s Law happened literally three hours after the plane left taking the command to Dubai. I dropped Joe off, did the two-hour wait around for the final “see you later” kiss, and ran some errands. When I got home, I heard a weird whistling noise upstairs. It was the toilet in the master. I opened the upper deck of the toilet, started gently wiggling some things, when all of a sudden water was shooting out like Old Faithful.
The only way to stop it was to literally plug my finger in the hole. I tried to turn the water to the toilet off, while keeping one hand deep in the tank, to no avail. I finally was able to reach a towel to contain the flood for six seconds while I grabbed a bigger towel. I shoved it in the tank and then jammed the lid in sideways on top of it and called the only person I knew who wasn’t deployed. He came over, with his milspouse wife, and fixed it.
They left and I am fairly sure I had an entire bottle of wine while I hoped it wasn’t a harbinger of deployment. It pretty much was. So wine was the winner, but only because that’s all I had on hand. There was this other time the garage door fell on top of my car three days into deployment. I have no idea what my liquid relaxation was that time.
Whitney Fauth
