Thursday, July 17, 2008

catching up

Sid came home on the 11th.

I wish it had actually been as simple as saying it makes it seem. The week leading up to that was filled with bitchwork, and the day before homecoming was insane. Insane. The cats picked up on that and vomited all over hell's half-acre as soon as I finished cleaning.

The morning of, we were expecting rain. When I woke up at 6, it was drizzling, and everything was wet. So instead of my white dress, I wore my black one. With that long black thing on, and my hair curled (THAT was interesting), I thought I bore more than a passing resemblance to Mrs Lovett from Sweeney Todd. Indeed, that night, Sid mentioned unprompted that I'd looked just like her. Minus the whole dark eye-makeup thing; that look has not been my thing for years now.

Cory came with, as it's not every day a friend of yours goes on deployment, and on the way to the base, we got stuck in traffic. A real gridlock. A car had broken down in the downtown tunnel, blocking all lanes of traffic. The cars were backed up for miles. And we sat with the car shut off for nearly half an hour, with me freaking out the whole time. I was convinced the Nassau would come in and the sailors disembark before we could get there.

I was wrong. By the time we got on base and found a place to park, the Nassau was pulling in. We were not as late as I'd imagined. For the next forty minutes, I stood in the baking sun...waiting. Did I mention I didn't wear sunscreen? Pasty-white starky, standing in the direct sunlight for a prolonged period of time? You know where this is going. I got good and fried.

Apparently new parents get to come off the boat first, and normally it wouldn't have bothered me, but for some reason, that day it really stuck in my craw. What a meager way of making amends for forcing these men away from the births of their children. "Oh, hey, we'll let you schmoes of the boat first, so you can finally see your new sons and daughters, and fuck the rest of the childless assholes." Yeah, that day it was really like a punch in the gut. Kick me while I'm down, why don't you.

It didn't matter, though, because Sid was right on the tails of those guys. As the crowd started to cheer, I turned to Cory and said, "we should get closer to them, Sid's expecting us to be over at the tent," and on the way over, I saw a bald guy, who could have been Sid from the back, but I wasn't sure, and I gave him a good look and noticed the blue platinum wedding band. It was Sid! Totally serendipitous, how that happened. We found each other right away in that big crowd.

Anyway, he's home. And while I'm happy to have him back, don't get me wrong, I wish that he'd stop spending so much time with his computer or his video games and do something with me. Anything. I helped him wax his car yesterday, just so I could spend time with him. Last night I broke down and told him how I felt, because it was obvious that he was not going to stop with the ignoring me unless I made him. And I didn't want to make him. But it's been almost a week. And I missed him. And I think that after five months apart, he can deign to put the controller down, shut off the computer, and spend some time with his wife.

Oh, and remember all that shit I wrote that I didn't want Sid to see? Stalking-ass motherfucker found and read this blog. Yes, that's right, Siddy, I called you a stalking-ass motherfucker. I only found this out because he teased me about my Brad Pitt dream.

AWKWARD.