Three may keep a secret, but only if two of them are dead

WARNING: UNSOLICITED UTERUS UPDATE

Drum roll, please.

I'm pregnant. Knocked up. Expecting. In the family way. Up the duff. Bun in the oven.

You read that right (for the few of you to whom I haven't already spilled the beans); Captain Husband and I are expecting a Baby Captain this coming summer--June 18, 2010, to be exact. I hope this announcement explains my reticence in blogging lately. Honestly, I wanted to scream it from the interwebs nearly as soon as we had found out (and the panicked sobbing had subsided for the most part; yay hormones!), but CH and I both wanted to play it safe. As of yesterday, I am now a full twelve weeks (or thirteen depending on which system you use), and on my way into the second trimester. We should get to hear the heartbeat at our next appointment on Tuesday, December 8. Other than the crappy symptoms of heartburn, painfully huge boobs, and a brief spate of nausea, I really haven't had any confirmation that there is in fact another creature living inside of me (military health care is pretty bare bones, so unlike a lot of other first-time moms out there, I was not offered a spate of ultrasounds and blood work to confirm the pregnancy; the doctors simply took my word for it and away we went), so CH and I are both looking forward to it and hopefully finding out the sex of the baby in January or February.

Now onto the second announcement: CH received his orders back to active duty service this Thursday, making his return to the Army officially official. What exactly does this mean? For starters, he's going to be moving out to Oklahoma in January, where he'll be in officer's school until the end of June. Which means I'm going to be by myself for the majority of the second and third trimesters. I am slightly nervous/freaked out about this, but I think we'll be ok. After all, it's not like Oklahoma is Afghanistan or anything; we'll be able to email, talk on the phone, or Skype daily, plus he can get weekend passes to come home for the big doctor appointments, etc. Another bonus is that the Army offers ten days of paternity leave; not a lot, mind you, but way better than they used to. So if everything goes well, CH will be able to attend the birth.

Ok, I'm sure this is a lot of information to process; I know we're still wrapping our collective brain around it!

Captain Husband's Kitchen Capers

Photo courtesy Life Photo Archives

In the interest in spending more time together (while spending less money), Captain Husband and I have been trying to cook more meals at home. We've got a pretty good arrangement going so far; we switch off every other night, and whoever didn't make dinner that evening has to do the cleanup. All in all, a pretty fair deal that's been working quite well for us. CH has really gotten into it, actually, and will go online the night before his day to cook to search up new recipes to try. The other day he sent me the following link for pasta fagioli and wanted to know if I'd be up to try it. Though the dish looked to be a little more labor intensive than what CH has previously attempted, I figured if he was up for the challenge then more power to him.

When I came home from work that night, I opened the front door only to be walloped in the face by the overwhelming smell of garlic. As I continued up the two flights of stairs to our main living area, the garlic smell became stronger and stronger; seriously, my eyes were watering before I had even made it into the kitchen. As soon as CH heard me enter, he turned around and said, "I think I bit off more than I could chew with this one." Kitchen gadgets, various vegetables and pasta fragments were strewn across the counter tops. I mentioned something about the overwhelming aroma coming from the stove and asked CH just how much garlic the recipe called for, anyway. "Well, it said three cloves, so I bought one of these," as he gestured to a package that had formerly contained three bulbs of garlic, "and minced two of them, because three seemed like an awful lot of garlic." After hearing this, I doubled over in laughter, realizing his mistake. "I hope you like potent soup, because you were only supposed to use the little parts that composed the whole bulb...those are the cloves that the recipe called for!" CH turned to the bubbling mess on the stove top, and eyed it balefully. In humorous defeat, he turned to me, smiled and said, "So...um, you want to order a pizza?"

We're still working on getting the garlic smell out of the house, but boy, was that pizza tasty.

A quick glance into the future

Somehow a whole month has managed to pass without me making a single update to this little web log of mine; for shame! It's not that I've been terribly busy or out painting the town red, but something about this time of year just feels as though everything is speeding past me at a breakneck pace. Add to that the pressures of actually having a full-time relationship once again, and, well, it's easy to get caught up in the minutiae of daily life.

Captain Husband and I continue our reintegration process, which, at times, can be pretty darn brutal. We seem to be over the worst of it (it's been at least two weeks since our last argument, and before that they were an almost nightly occurrence), but I'm still having trouble with the realization that even though we've now apparently gotten used to the "new" normal, it's only a matter of time before our world is turned upside down again. For those of you who are unaware of the situation, CH decided while in Afghanistan that he wanted to return to active duty service once he got back from his mission. He's since put in his request and now we're just waiting to hear whether or not the Army will take him back (and we're pretty sure they will), which should happen in the next two weeks or so.

CH and I have had several discussions in which he outlined the various possibilities of what will happen when he receives his orders. The best case scenario would be that CH is sent to officers' school in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where he would undergo the necessary training required for him to receive his next promotion, while I would stay behind in Virginia for the six-to-eight months that he's gone. After that, CH would volunteer for a year-long assignment in Korea, where he would hopefully receive a command position and continue on his path to promotion. Depending on the situation, he might extend his stay in Korea to two years, all the while I'm in Virginia, holding down the fort, working at my current job, and (theoretically) paying down my student loans. The best part about him being a geographic bachelor in Korea is that I could go and visit him if we opted, plus he would have regular access to a cell phone and the internet--something he definitely did not have in Afghanistan. Then, once he was through in Korea, he would return to the States with his promotion in hand, and request to go back to school for eighteen months to get his masters degree through the GI bill. This is, of course, the best case scenario, and the Army--albeit in my limited experience--often has an uncanny knack of doing the exact opposite of what you've hoped/planned for, which naturally scares the bejeesus out of me.

I know some people hear military spouses' tales of woe and apprehension and think to themselves,"Well, you knew what you were getting into when you married him/her." However, in my case, that isn't necessarily true. When CH and I met, the Army was a part of his past, not his future. He was still active with the Virginia National Guard, which I respected, but he told me that he had no intentions of going back to the Army life that he had left behind. You can imagine my surprise, then, when he informed me only three and a half months into our relationship that he had made the decision to volunteer for a one-year mission in Afghanistan. Never in a million years, though, did I expect our phone calls and emails while he was gone to turn more and more to the topic of going back to active duty service once he returned from the sandbox. I secretly hoped that CH's experience in Afghanistan would change his mind, but it only seemed to strengthen his resolve. And once he returned to his civilian job this past August, CH's decision to return to the Army was all but cemented by his extreme dissatisfaction with his current work.

So where exactly does this leave me? Well, I'm not sure. I am able to accept the rationalization behind CH's choice--job security, a good paycheck, excellent benefits for both of us--but it is terribly difficult for me to accept the drastic effects that his decision will have on my life. Eventually, I will have to quit my job (which, though I complain about it, is still extremely satisfying to me on an intellectual level) and move to a place that I know nothing about, far from my support network of family and friends that I relied upon while CH was gone. It's a scary prospect, and the feminist in me is having a hard time coming to terms with the reality of my situation, but I am trying. Fortunately, CH realizes this and is understanding when I air my frustrations and fears. If anything, the year apart has taught us to trust each other and support one another no matter what, which has come in very handy while in this stage of unknowing, and for that, I am thankful.

Peachy keen

Thanks to the generosity of one of my boss's clients, I wound up with about three pounds of fresh-from-the-farm peaches today. It's been awhile since I last stretched my culinary muscles, so I decided that tonight I would make a peach cobbler from scratch. I grabbed a recipe from Martha, realized that I had about 99% of the ingredients already, and decided to go for it. I must say, it turned out even better than I had hoped; sweet but not saccharine, with a crumbly topping that melted in your mouth. The only thing that could have made it even better was some vanilla ice cream, so Captain Husband and I could have enjoyed some of the cobbler à la mode. But there's always next time!

Greetings from oh-my-god-it's-so-sunny Tucson, Arizona

This stunning view of the Santa Catalina Mountains is what I get to see first thing every morning from our room at the lodge at Ventana Canyon. Pretty nice, eh? Captain Husband and I flew out here on Thursday for one of his old college buddy's wedding, which is taking place at the lodge today. This is my first time to the southwest, and so far so good. The sun is blazing, but there's no humidity so when the temperature reaches 100 degrees it's still nowhere near as bad as it's been in Virginia this summer. We rented a sweet 2010 Mustang convertible and I got to drive it around Tucson and explore yesterday while CH sweated it out on the golf course with his friends. I did some antiquing in town and stumbled across this gem:

This stunning circa 1870 quilt is completely hand-pieced and hand-stitched and hails from Exeter, Maine. A family history was also attached, detailing who made it and for whom. I still can't get over how rich and vibrant the coloration is after nearly one hundred and forty years of use. I'm thinking about consigning it to my boss to show at the Deerfield/ADA antiques show coming up in October, although it's so gorgeous that it will be hard to see it go!

the economy, stupid

It's more like the stupid economy, but regardless, I just found out that I'm going to be on the receiving end of a rather large, albeit temporary (hopefully), pay cut. Le sigh. Oh, and the icing on the cake? It's not a pay cut in the form of furlough days, it's a flat-out salary slash, which means I'll be working my regular five days a week, but will be getting paid for four. And come September, I'll be working every other Saturday, which means some weeks I'll be working six days and being paid for four. Joy!

Of course I realize things could be worse. I still have a job after all. But it's a bitter pill to swallow. If it were a pay cut via a shortened work schedule, I could make up the difference in pay by picking up an extra day at my part-time job. In the mean time, I'll just keep tracking down that elusive pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Apparently, it's somewhere at the bottom of the Potomac River. Looks like the ducks are off to a head start. IT'S ON, DUCKS.

Long time, no blog

So it's been over a week now since Captain Husband made his safe return home last Thursday; I managed to have the house cleaned and decorated for his welcome home (Sandy even "helped") and successfully took care of the couple of surprises that I wanted to greet him with. Surprise number one was an antique pocket watch that I got engraved with a sappy, sentimental message (the jeweler thought I was nuts) that was happily ready the day before CH was due back. Surprise number two was a little more difficult: arranging for a 2010 Mustang in which to pick him up at the airport. Why a Mustang, you might be asking yourself? Well, when CH was home on his leave back in May, he spotted the new 2010s at the dealers and it was love at first sight. He even took one of the information folders on the car back to Afghanistan with him to obsess over. So I thought it would be nice, not to mention completely unexpected, to pick him up in one. Fortunately for me, Hertz rents out the Mustang as part of their "Fun" line, so it was just a matter of making some phone calls and last minute tweaking (CH kept changing the date and time of his arrival on me), but I was able to score one. Check it out:

I have to admit, it was a lot of fun running errands in this car. And I was able to successfully throw CH for a loop when I met him at the airport; it helped that he didn't even realize it was me pulling up in it until I got out and ran over to him. At first, he thought I must have traded in my car for the Mustang...but then I jokingly told him that I had traded in his truck. I'm evil like that. We kept the Mustang for an extra day and CH had a blast driving it around and really getting a feel for it. I realize that I opened up a giant can of worms here by actively feeding into his obsession with the car, but hey, I wanted his welcome home to be special.

We're currently in the process of reintegrating, and I'm not going to lie; it sucks. Once the initial euphoria of having CH back started to wear off (at about day three), I became acutely aware of having to share my space and habits with another person. Neither of us slept well for the first week because we'd gotten used to other sleeping arrangements; there are little arguments here and there about how things are done (or not done)and most of all, I just want things to be "normal" again, even though I have no idea what the new normal is for us. It's definitely a roller coaster, but I'm sure everything will be worth the ups and downs in the end.