Appreciate my husband

a little Buddha statue for my bookshelf for our third anniversary yesterday. We had already agreed to not exchange gifts, since our trip to NYC was our anniversary gift to ourselves, but he came home with one anyway. I have been mentioning for months that I would like some sort of Buddhist symbol in our home, a little something to remind me to continue probing my budding interest, and he picked out the perfect thing!

Oh, and he washed and cleaned out my car the other day, too. Good man.

He took off the screens from my kitchen windows today and cleaned the panes, all so I could see my birdies better from the window! Good husband…

even though I had a meltdown on him last weekend. I went home to Ohio for a week to host a baby shower, and had a glorious time skipping from friend’s house to friend’s house, sharing meals, good wine and even better conversation. I lunched with my Grandma, had Chinese takeout night with the girls, drove down to Dayton, OH and spent the weekend with my lovely stepdaughter; I hung around in PJs with my Mom and humored her penchant for Lifetime movies. In short, it was a week of paradise. And then I came home, to the frozen tundra that is Minot. No friends, no job, no leaving the house for fear of losing a limb to frostbite, and a husband that works 12 hour days. So, I suppose a meltdown was in the works. I blustered, I ranted, I raged for a day or so about hating this place and being trapped in the house all of the time. Let me clarify here: I’m not really miserable here, but the first few months of a military PCS (permanent change of station) are always very hard. While my husband simply picks up his same job in a new place, I am usually stuck performing the military wife niceties, like reaching out to new neighbors (which is not bad, but I’m very shy), and humoring phone calls from the colonel’s wives suggesting ways I become more “involved” in base life. I am the one who has to find a new job, wherever I can pick up the scraps, and feel my way blindly through yet another new place. I always forge ahead, knowing that in time I will feel comfortable, and I will make friends and find new outlets. That being said, I find myself very stressed at first, and my husband is the usual outlet for that stress.
Anyway, after my freakout last week, my husband started sending emails while at work about various outings this week, asking me if I wanted to attend. So…we ended up going to a local fundraiser yesterday evening, and going to an appetizer and drinks night at the officer’s club tonight, and we are volunteering for Special Olympics tomorrow. He never said why, but nice guy that he is, I know he has been on the hunt for things for us to do because he knows I need to get out of the house more. He’s a good husband.

on this, although I feel like I have faltered lately. I have complained a lot about moving up to the damn arctic circle in Minot (although it IS getting better), and I blame him a lot for feeling stalled out professionally. Minot’s job market SUCKS, and my first instinct is to blame poor husband that I can’t find a job, and one making over $7 an hour at that (an that’s college grad pay around here!). It’s hard not to feel that the military stifles any hope I have for doing anything meaningful in life. I can never build up seniority, a pension or 401K, and everytime I start to like something, it’s time to move on. So, my most recent goal in appreciating the hubby is to not blame him for my present circumstances. His profession has supported us handsomely for many years, after all. I guess I’m going to have embrace living in the moment, as I’ve outlined elsewhere, and not be so concerned with making money and building myself professionally…for now.

Cliche? Maybe not. While we always say that we want to appreciate the people in our lives more (especially our spouses), it becomes like every other vague, hopeful goal: too broad and varied to really implement in life. I mean with this goal to simply tell my husband one thing every day that I appreciate about him. It seems so simple, and yet the hours slip by each day and I fill them tasks, chores and the daily grind. And I do really appreciate him: his determination, his pride, his sacrifice in the Armed Forces. I even appreciate the little things, too. He cleans out the fridge because I hate doing it. He always offers to be the driver for 9 pm munchie runs or to pick up a movie before the movie store closes. I aim to tell him one of these things each day.