Update: K is back to a boat. What this means: long hours, months out to sea, boat smell, and spouse groups. Honestly, I love spouse groups. When we’re not on a boat, I miss the camaraderie, the built-in community, the gossip/wine fests that we have time for with no spouses at home.

 

[Also, attention, civilians: Of all the boats we’ve been on, I’ve never encountered anything similar to an episode of Army Wives. That shit is just ridiculous. I watched a few episodes because I needed something to do when it first came out. I stopped watching at the episode where one of the wives calls her husband’s command to ask that the drill sergeant (or someone…? IDK. Someone in the Army that bosses other people around while they exercise) to ask him to take it easy on her husband so that he has time to heal. Yeah, no. That shit is just ridiculous.]

 

I also love boat life because there’s a little more down time to write. Ha! Kidding. More like, there’s a little more down time to drink wine and zone out in front of trash TV.

The problem is that K’s role on the boat means that there’s more of a role for his wife. The other problem is that I’m the wife. I mean, mostly that’s great, except when it means that I have obligations. FFS, I still have 80% of my Christmas cards to send out — I’m the flaky person that writes “happy holidays,” not to be culturally sensitive, but because they never get out in time to just be for Christmas. All that to say, I already suck at normal adult obligations, Navy people; don’t expect extra things. 

Thankfully, I’m already working on setting the bar pretty low.

K went out to the boat for an entire week at the end of its (excuse me, her) patrol to get to know people and start the process of taking over for the last guy. About 24 hours after he left, we got notice that we’d have a chance to send some mail out to the boat, and K sent a message through half a dozen people to ask me to send “collar devices.”

Let me just break to say: we’ve been married for 117 months (almost 10 years. It took me a long time to do that math. If it’s wrong, please don’t correct me). All of that time has been Navy time. I should know things.

Anyway. Here’s a step-by-step guide to send your husband collar devices:

1. Send messages to Important People asking, “WTF are collar devices?”
2. Receive “uhhh…. you’re kind of a dumbass” messages.
3. Remember that this is true.
4. Google “Collar Devices”
5. Remember what the words “collar” and “device” mean.
6. Google “[husband’s rank] collar device.”
7. Get really confused.
8. Remember that there are probably prepped uniforms hanging in his closet.
9. Steal collar devices from other uniform
10. Be surprised at the emblem, even though he’s been the same rank for over 5 years.
11. Accidentally stab yourself with the pin.
12. Yell cusswords in front of your 2-year old.
13. Put them in a ziplock with a few other surprises.
14. Incorporate “collar devices” into your normal vocabulary, because you’re a salty Navy wife and now you know the things.
15. Meet with Important People to drop off the bag.
16. Realize just a little too late that you’re telling them this story of how you suck at being a Navy wife.
17. Pretend that they can totally trust you to be one of the Important People.

Or, you could shorten that to use common sense, know things, put things in bag, send to boat, keep embarrassing stories to yourself. Either way.

 

 

Hopefully, that will be the only installment of “sonofabitch, I’m not responsible enough for this,” but I’m not going to bet the farm on it. (Unless I’m not responsible enough for a farm either, in which case, it’d probably be best for me to lose it.)

Cheers and cookies, friends. I’m gonna need them.