the cat and I

So… well, M’s gone. Not much to say besides that. After he hopped on the bus, I headed to J3′s house with C. C’s fiance deployed with M and J3′s partner leaves in a few days. We all ate dinner together and chatted a little bit. More of a distraction from reality than anything else.

Haven’t had a big breakdown yet, but forcing it isn’t doing shit, so I’m going to settle down with a movie, and schedule myself an early bed time.

Here’s to an empty house, and cleaning up after the man I won’t see for 3 months. *sigh*

Like M has been saying. It’s just like another field ex… except with live ammunition.

h&v

t-22.5 hours

Still holding fast here on the homefront. My cousin St offered sage advise as an apprentice sommelier to choose the wine for tonight’s festivities. I had asked for a recommendation for white in the $40 range, which turned into a 20 minute conversation on a cell phone in the liquor store about regions and methods and all kinds of other stuff. We ended up with a French Chablis (Premier Cru). It’s nice, but I know nothing of wine. He said, near the end of the conversation, that he didn’t often buy $40 bottles of wine for pure drinking pleasure, but that he’d never had such an occasion. Come to think of it… it seems odd that an apprentice sommelier hasn’t drank a $40 bottle of wine for pleasure.

Today was pretty low key. Yesterday M found out that he had to have his kit packed for transport, he was expecting to have until Monday to do so. So while I was out walking, he was packing frantically. So today saw him cleaning up the back room (!!!), and packing the bag that will accompany him on the service flight.
I headed into town to grab sushi (which didn’t happen), the wine, and some munchies.

While waiting at a light backed up due to construction, I saw some guys my age holding a sign saying “traveling, broke & hungry, will accept anything you offer”. I had a bag of cookies in my car and as I was rooting around the bag to get them out, the light changed and traffic started moving. I didn’t have time to get the bag of cookies or my window open to give the bag to these two guys before I had to pull ahead. I have felt bad ever since, thinking I should have done more to help them out.

I don’t know how much longer this ‘strength’ can hold up. I think things and I can feel the tears welling up. I force it back down, but then the next time I feel it welling up, it takes so much more effort to force it back down. Eventually I’ll let the dam break, but for the time being…

I got a sneak peek from our photographer yesterday. The photos are amazing! She’s only sent 8 or so, but they’re amazing and I can’t wait to see the rest of the set!

Here’s something. I don’t need people “awwww”ing and “poor you”ing at me because my partner’s going overseas. I’ve thought of the worst that can happen. Hell, M and I have discussed contingency plans for the worst that can happen. I don’t need, when waiting to see him off, anyone calling me saying “boo hoo, you must be so sad”. Yes, I’m sad. Yes, I’ll miss him. Yes, I’m worried for his safety. But this is his job,  this is the life that I’ve chosen with him. And this is where I’ll be waiting for him upon his safe return.

Now, just to focus on not holding my breath for the next 3 months.

Comon’ HLTA!

h&v

so good!

Wow. The last 24 hours have been… pretty spectacular. Home-coming is always great because it’s just an eye-opening reminder of how amazing I think M is. I’m sure anything I say will be written off as silly girl-emotions, but I’ve never been so consistently in awe of my partner as I am M.

Of course, something I haven’t written about was M’s proclivity of talking non-stop for hours after he returns from somewhere. This time, hilariously, he told me to tell him to stop, since his mother had just spent 5 days talking at him, non-stop. He went on about how annoying this habit was, and that he understands that he does the same. I told him that it’s part of the home-coming process, and that I love his non-stop chatter and ranting. And even his caveat didn’t stop the rapid-fire commentary on his week in the home province.

We stayed at the Fairmont, in their “gold level” accommodations, as with a military discount it didn’t make sense to take a standard king room. There were all kinds of swanky amenities that went along with it, but after the fucking that occurred, we weren’t inclined to put our clothes back on to partake in the cocktails-til-11pm, for example.
Fortunately, we DID partake in the stellar “Deluxe Continental” breakfast offered to Gold guests. Holy crap was it amazing – scrambled eggs with cheese and scallions, fresh delicious croissants, teensy ketchup bottles, cut up fruit, yogurt, tomatoes and cucumber with bocconcini and basil… the list goes on.
Checkout was noon, but after slowly getting ready, watching some clips on YouTube, and calling valet (!!!!)  to take our stuff to the car, we were out of the room just after 11am.

We wandered around downtown for an hour or so waiting for our appointment with the photographer. After some directional issues, we met up on a street corner in our preferred neighbourhood.  We discussed a little bit of what we were looking for. We’d said “nothing romantic”, but I guess we really meant nothing forced, or cheesy. We found a great doorway to a warehouse and used that for the first few shots, and then things just started to flow a little better from there. Apparently kissing was M’s favourite shot to take, because in almost every pose he kissed me. The photographer apparently noted M’s habit of brushing the hair off my face, and tried to use that in a few shots. We got some great pics at the riverfront, some against a wall of graffiti, in front of a parkade, on a construction site… she really took my comment that we are an “urban-style” couple seriously.
It was a lot of fun, and only took about 2 hours for the full shoot.

Afterwards, we were famished and roasting in the strange heat of late-September. We got the car out of valet, and drove to the italian restaurant across the river. We split some garlic/cheese bread and I had gnocchi with zucchini and goat cheese, and M had a meat lasagna. We had our usual entertainment of trashy people punching each other out on the street corner, and the fire trucks blasting out of the station across the road. Not to mention “the guy in the jacket” who was stoned off his face trying to get in the out door of the patio we were sitting on. Hah. The Capital is so trashy.

Afterwards we went to the Mall, where M spent $150 on books. I got another Post Secret book, and two novels. If anyone wants to send ME a care package, I’ll take your used books. My plan is to hibernate in alternate realities for the next 6 months, whilst sitting on a stationary bike or walking on a treadmill. Fuck the winter!!

Ahem. So after some major frustrations and minor shopping, and when the sun was low enough in the sky as to not blind us, we headed home.
We’ve been geeking out on our respective laptops since. And it’s quickly coming up on bed time.

h&v

ill equipped

M left this morning for his whirlwind tour of “home”. I hope it goes better for him than he anticipates.

Last night included some serious sexin’. We’ve had the conversation a few times now that we don’t “make love”, we fuck. We like it hard and fast. But in those rare moments of a long or unknown farewell, we get about as close to making love as we ever would. We call it ‘the slow fuck’.

Last night’s slow fuck was near perfection. Well, they all are, really. M is not an intuitively emotional sort of person, pretty serious things have to happen before he shows his feelings outwardly. But when we’re slow fucking, I know exactly how he feels about me.

On a sort of side note. I know he’s getting emotional about the parting as well. He’s been kissing my head. That in itself is a hint, but the frequency is something entirely more telling.

I don’t have much else. I’m working this Saturday in lieu of getting next Friday off. I’m picking up M in the Capital, and then we’re going to spend the night and have some sexin’ and enjoy the city some before heading back to the base to spend the rest of the weekend trying not to burst into tears.

Oh, we also found out from a friend whose husband is deploying with M, that the chalk is leaving at 6pm. I was really looking forward to a morning farewell, then sitting watching my favourite movies (Bridget Jones’ Diary, Stranger than Fiction, and Love Actually were on the list), in my pajamas, and eating breakfast foods for each meal.

Nothing like an emotional enema.

I’m really starting to feel ill equipped for this. And no, I don’t want to talk about it.

h&v

catch my breath

I have to briefly write about two things. I came to write about the second half of this post specifically, but when I entered the title for this post, I remembered last night’s activities…

I’ve been doing cross-fit twice a week now for the last few weeks. It’s just one of my friends, K – a military member, who’s gotten a group of girls together who are interested in bettering their fitness. I guess, for what feels like the first time in my life, I actually fall into this category.
In addition to this, I’ve been walking nightly with a down-the-street neighbour of mine, J5, sometimes walking, riding (mountain bikes) and cross fitting all in one day.

M, in the interest of bettering his cardio prior to deployment, has gotten it into his head that he should be doing weighted marches (a walk in combats carrying a backpack full of soup cans, in this case), and joined J5 and I a few days ago for our walk. We noticed we walked at a faster pace with M beside us. He also did interval runs up the block and back while we kept our new pace on our usual route.

So the big news, for me anyway; Last night J5 couldn’t come for the nightly walk, so it was just M and I. Him weighted, and me in the Sugoi 3/4 length pants I bought as a “goal” item (size L, something to aspire to – they’re waaay too tight), we did interval runs on an extended version of the route J5 and I take. By the time we got back onto the main road which leads back to our Q, we were alternately walking/sprinting from light post to light post. The strip is probably 1km long, so by the time we hit our street, I was winded pretty good.
But I feel amazing this morning, and am disappointed it won’t happen again for a few days as tonight M and I have a dinner with friends, and tomorrow is a big appreciation do for winning the IRP contract for the next 5 years. They’re paying us to go to the nearest capital city for dinner, dancing (on a Tuesday night! hah!), and a night in a hotel, not to mention paid time for travel and time off work to get there. One of our sister offices gets to fly in, lucky ladies.

Suffice to say, Wednesday is cross-fit again, and hopefully slightly more running.

* * *

What I actually came to write about was a conversation moments ago with M. There’s a lot of paper work we’re sitting on, trying to get a loan to pay down some of our ridiculous credit debt, making us officially common law (which we have been in the eyes of the province for the last 6 months, but because the clerks and bigwigs can’t coordinate themselves, not in the eyes of the military because we haven’t signed some blasted paper work), and getting M’s affairs legally in order so that things happen and people are notified properly of any issues that may arise.

The biggest issue, and the elephant in the room of our relationship, is the possibility of M’s death. Today he said something about the Memorial Cross. This is the medal given to the service members family upon his/her death. Kind of a big deal for the family left behind. He said that it would be awarded to his mother. Before I really understood what he was saying, I asked why, and he said, “because she’s my mother”. The old anger in me flared up but wasn’t given the opportunity to explode into the room before M corrected himself and suggested, “there’s room for three names here, maybe you each get one. I’ll add my brothers name as well”.

See, this is why I want to be a wife. I understand that his mother will never lose that rank in his life, even if we do marry, but outside of our relationship dynamic, I feel it gives me more clout. I’m not ‘just a girlfriend’, I’m a committed member of his family. We together are a family. Period.

When we started this life together in March of 2008, I was welcomed into the fold of Army Wives here, and upon introduction and them asking about ‘my husband’, I quickly corrected them to say he was ‘just my boyfriend’. They told me, “that doesn’t matter – you live here, you’re committed, you’re a wife”.

I refuse to accept the title of Wife, and honour him the title of Husband until there is an official commitment made. I never thought I’d find myself being this traditional, but I want society to acknowledge the commitment we have made to one another.

Heaven forbid the necessity to receive the Memorial Cross. For any of us “wives”.

h&v