It was one year ago today that I married my best friend, my confidante, my constant companion, the love of my life, the one who makes my heart skip a beat. At 2 o’clock in the afternoon at a beautiful vineyard in Temecula, California, I became my husband’s wife! Today, we celebrate our first anniversary….
…And today, we celebrate it apart.
Not by choice.
By Navy.
It’s been a crazy year of marriage for us…but in a good way of course! We’ve thoroughly enjoyed being newlyweds (for the time that we’ve actually been together). We had our first Christmas as husband and wife. Even our first Valentine’s Day together ever! We adopted our crazy puppy who chews up everything we own. We’ve had our huge fights and we’ve had our frequent bickering. We bought our first real couch and “big” screen tv. And hubby even helped me start my own business! Wow, it’s been a whirlwind of a year! And I have LOVED being his wife through every second of it (yes, even during our fights)!
So now I’m sitting at the dining room table in my parents’ home in the Philippines with my mom and dad, aunt and uncle, and a Dairy Queen ice cream cake “celebrating” my one year wedding anniversary sans hubby. No romantic dinner. No candlelight and flowers. No cuddling on the couch to our favorite movie. No kisses. And…let’s face it people…no anniversary sex. What? I’m allowed to say that. I am married after all!
Well, at least I have my family and ice cream cake, right? Yeeeeaaaahhhh….I love my family and all, but they’re not exactly the ones I’d like to be spending my anniversary with. Think about it. Would you prefer spending your very first wedding anniversary with your family instead of your spouse? Not too many people spend their one year anniversary apart. It’s definitely not how I was planning on this to happen.
But I knew this type of thing would happen. It’s to be expected when you marry into the military. Still, it really sucks. It’s so hard to be away from the one I love during these special moments of our marriage. And I never really realized just how much I actually really do miss him until I found myself spending our anniversary eating dinner at California Pizza Kitchen (yes, they have one in the Philippines) with everyone EXCEPT my husband.
Oh well. What can I do? Hubby is on deployment for a little more than three more months and I can’t change anything about that. I guess we’ll just have to wait and celebrate our first year of marriage a little later on. So I’ll do my best to be thankful for family and ice cream cake. I’ll just have to remind hubby to make up for the romantic dinner, flowers, cuddling, kisses, and…*ahem*…sex when he gets back
So I am now into the second week of hubby’s deployment in the Western Pacific. Two weeks, and I haven’t gone crazy yet! (Though going to SIL’s wedding brought me close to the edge…haha). I think the only thing that will get me through the next six months of life without hubby is the fact that I pretty much have something going on every month. This month was SIL’s wedding, and an upcoming shower for a special lady in my life. September is…well…nothing really, but the season premiers of all my fave tv shows will be occurring during this month so that will def have me occupied October, brudder and his wifey will be having their first child! Yay! November, mommy and daddy will be flying back from the Philippines to see their new grandbaby so it will be Thanksgiving with the whole fam. December will be my turn to fly to the Philippines to spend Christmas with the parents. January is yet to be determined, though I’m sure I’ll come up with something to do. And then February is the return of my long lost hubby. Throw in a trip to Disneyland each month, and the occasional meander to Sea World (yay for passes!), and I think I’ve given myself a fair amount of distraction for while hubby’s gone.
To top it off, I have great girlfriends to hang out with on a regular basis. And that, my friends, has to be the greatest distraction of all. Nothing makes the time go by faster than spending those long days without hubby with friends having fun doing whatever we feel like. Just today, I went out with college friend to go purse shopping. Thankfully, I was unsuccessful in finding a purse to purchase since I don’t really have the money to spend on a purse at the moment. But while we wandered around the mall, talking about life as newlyweds, we came up with the fantastic idea of doing weekly cook nights. So now, every Tuesday, college friend and I will be getting together and trying out new recipes together so that we can learn to cook for our hubbies! Yay! And, I have navy wife friend that I hang out with often, as well. She’s the wife of another sailor that’s on the same ship and in the same division as my hubby. So we are both husbandless for the next six months. And so for the next six months we will be hanging out and having fun while our hubbies are away. The great thing about navy wife friend is that she absolutely and completely knows what I’m going through because her hubby is with my hubby! So we talk about the latest news we’ve gotten from our hubbies and we share any information we may have. It’s awesome. And heck, she’s just a sweet girl anyways so I would hang out with her even if her hubby wasn’t my hubby’s friend!
But even with all these distractions to keep my mind off of my absent husband, the emptiness and loneliness still hits me every time I come home to an empty house…and an empty inbox! Argh! If only hubby emailed me more often! But then I have to remind myself that hubby is working his arse off everyday for who knows how many hours a day, so sometimes emailing isn’t an option. But still, it’d be nice, ya know?
Oh deployments. The bane of navy life. Thank goodness for friends, family, and Disneyland
The past few days have been quite the whirlwind (or perhaps hurricane would be the better word) of activity for me. I just got back at midnight yesterday morning from a four-day trip to Florida to attend my sister-in-law’s wedding. And let me just say, I don’t really know what I was thinking!
Let me explain. Not long after hubby and I got married last December, hubby’s sister got engaged and more wedding plans were in the works for hubby’s family. No big deal really since of course we would go to the wedding. But the wedding date that SIL and her fiance chose made attending the wedding just a little more complicated, at least for me. They picked a date right smack at the start of hubby’s deployment. So what was I supposed to do?! Should I just suck it up and go to the wedding by myself and brave all the unfamiliar faces of in-laws and friends? Or should I wuss out and come up with some lame excuse as to why I couldn’t go and risk upsetting the in-laws because I didn’t go to SIL’s wedding? Quite the decision to make, right? And the situation was only aggravated by the fact that I am like the most indecisive person ever!
Needless to say, I mulled over what I should do for weeks before hubby left on his deployment. And asking the hubby for his input offered no solution. “Honey, what do you think I should do? Do you think I should go?” “Babe, it doesn’t matter to me what you do. Just do what you want.” Thanks, honey. A big help you are! Anyways, the RSVP date rolled by and still I had not made a decision. Two weeks after the RSVP deadline, and just a week before the wedding date, hubby leaves on his deployment and I finally made a decision. In as much as I was terrified to make a trip to Florida on my own to spend four days with a throng of people I had never met before, and to sit through four days of uber romantic wedding events while my husband was away at sea, I sucked up all the courage I had, called the in-laws, and asked if I could still attend. “Really? Of course you can still come! We’d love for you to be here!” Great. I was secretly hoping that it would have been too much of a pain for SIL and her fiance to add me to the final head count, which had already been given. No such luck. And in four days I was on a United flight to Orlando.
Hubby’s family must not have been the only ones pleased with my decision to attend the wedding. I was granted blessing after blessing during my travel to Florida. I breezed through security and made it to my gate with an hour to spare. And a few minutes before boarding began, my name was called to approach the gate desk. “Uh-oh” was what went through my mind. But I had no reason to worry. Apparently, I was somehow chosen to receive a free upgraded seat in Economy plus where I would have five more inches of leg room near the front of the plane! Yay! And, the seat I was given was an aisle seat! Even better! Definitely better than the middle seat I had in the very back of the plane…a consequence of booking my flight only days before. Seriously though, I was stoked. So I enjoyed my aisle seat in economy plus on my flight to Denver, and, using my genius mind, figured out that I had also lucked into getting a seat in economy plus for my flight to Orlando as well. I was somehow able to reserve that seat without having to pay the upgrade fee, probably because there were no other seats available. It was awesome. It wasn’t first class awesome, but those five extra inches do make a difference.
Throughout both of my flights, I had my nose stuck in the book New Moon, which I had checked out from the library. That, and a nice nap on my flight to Orlando, made the time pass fairly quickly. Before I knew it, I was at MCO being greeted by hubby’s dad. And from there the hurricane of wedding events began.
My first night in Orlando was pretty chill. Dad drove me to his house where Mom, her partner K, and her mother (whom I will refer to as Grandma V) met me to take me to Mom and K’s house for the night. We chatted about what to expect, and just about things in general. And in no time we were all asleep for the night. The next morning was when things really started to get going. Picking up dresses from the seamstress. Checking into the hotel near the wedding site. K had to pick up one of the groomsmen from the airport and rush him back to the wedding site for the rehearsal. Then there was the rehearsal, which went smoothly despite the antics of SIL’s bridesmaids who were quite the energetic bunch. And then there was the rehearsal dinner. Probably one of the loudest nights I’ve experienced in a long time. And yes, there was alcohol involved in the making of this high-volume event. It was fun seeing everything falling into place for SIL and her man. Mom and Dad were already getting emotional, as was SIL. There was just so much joy in everything that was happening. It was impossible not to feel it.
And to envy it…Oh how I wished hubby had been there with me to experience it all!
Anyways, day before the wedding…done. Back to the hotel with Mom, K, and Grandma V, and it was lights out. A new day starts, and it is wedding day! You could feel the anxiety like you could feel static electricity after someone rubs a balloon on your head. It made your skin tingle! But there was no reason for the anxiety since the entire day went so smoothly. Of course, this is me talking. I’m sure the bride and her mother felt differently. Haha. There was breakfast with the bride and the bridesmaids. Then all the girls got their hair and makeup done. Then it was off to the wedding site for those final moments of preparation.
And finally…
The Lucky Groom
Just like in the movie 27 Dresses, while everyone else was watching the bride walk down the aisle, I turned my attention to the groom. Can you not just feel the love in his eyes? Seriously folks, this is the kind of love that makes you sick when you’re in a lonely mood, that’s how awesome it was. Of course, I wanted to die from missing my hubby right at that moment, and for much of the duration of the evening. But I sucked it up and had a good time…with the help of two glasses of wine and fun conversation with K and Grandma V. I was pretty busy meeting tons of in-laws I hadn’t met yet anyways. Wow, hubby has a lot of family. But they were all super fun and I was glad I got to meet them all.
So, overall, I still am not sure how I feel about having gone to the wedding. It was great meeting new family and seeing the in-laws, and of course seeing SIL get married. I was glad I went for those reasons. But being there with all of hubby’s family, and sitting through a wedding, all without my hubby by my side…it was heartbreaking for me. There were many tears shed in secret during my stay in Florida. Tears of sorrow as I miss my husband. Tears of envy as I watched so many people experience joy and happiness while I was experiencing loneliness. And tears of just pent up emotion that needed to be shed. So yeah. I guess I’m glad I went to see everyone and to be there for my SIL. But should a similar situation ever arise again, I think I’ll sit one out next time.
The Bride and Groom
Oh, and the flight back to San Diego was another upgrade blessing. They had overbooked my flight to Denver, so I was put on a plane to Los Angeles instead, placed in economy plus again, and given a complimentary round-trip ticket for changing my flight! Yay! But after sitting on a plane for five freaking hours next to a couple with two of the most rowdy little boys on the planet, all I have to say is, they better freaking have given me a free ticket, cuz that flight was HE**! Honestly, I love kids. But these little boys (they had to be like two and three years old) didn’t let up the entire plane ride! If one wasn’t throwing a tantrum about something, the other one was. And when the older of the two boys threw up on the floor? Cue two hours of nonstop shrieking and crying. And I’m not talking that whiny kind of crying either. I’m talking high-pitched, shrilly, shrieks of rage crying. I had started by praying for the kids, that they would calm down and find some sort of peace during the flight. But by the end of it, I was praying for the Lord to keep me from shrieking and crying like they were just to scare the junk out of those kids and maybe get them to shut up for a little bit. I couldn’t get off that plane fast enough as soon as we landed in LA.
Now I’m back in San Diego, dog sitting for my neighbor who had watched my dogs while I was in Florida. 10 days with three crazy dogs. If you don’t hear from me for a while, you’ll know why…
In about 3 months my brudder and sis-in-law will be having their first child, and I am uber freaking stoked to become an aunt…and to see my big brudder become a Daddy for the first time in his life And of course our whole family is in a bit of a baby buzz right now with the anticipation of a new baby in the family. Sadly, I feel I am missing out on most of that buzz. Much of the family lives up in San Jose, a short drive from where brudder and SIL live. So they’ve gotten to see SIL from the beginning. They’ve gotten to see SIL’s belly grow as her pregnancy progresses. And they are some of the first to see ultrasound images of the baby. Meanwhile, I’m down in San Diego with my hubby (well, kind of “with” my hubby…darn deployments), and I get to see everything through facebook. Facebook for crying out loud! It’s like when you’re perusing your home page to find out someone you know got married. I just so happen to come across pics and vids of my nephew posted by SIL or the parents. Kind of annoying.
I guess that just goes to show how out of touch I am with my own family. Maybe I’m not trying hard enough to keep in touch? I blog when I can. I Facebook often enough I suppose. But it’s tough when I live hundreds of miles from everyone, while they all live so close to each other. I suppose I can’t use that excuse either, though, since the parents are in the Philippines and they seem to be more in the loop than me! I guess I just kind of feel left out, like I’m the last to know anything going on in the family. Have I distanced myself that much in the past few years? I suppose I have been in my own little world for a while. Graduating college. Job hunting. Being enamored with my now husband. Trying to start a business. You know, figuring out my life. But now I feel like I’ve been missing out on a part of it, too.
Call me jealous, I guess. I want what the rest of my family seems to have. A connection to each other. But then again, maybe I already have that. I just need to find it again, to rekindle it and keep it strong. I dunno. I’ll figure it out eventually I’m sure.
I won’t get to meet him for a few months yet, but still, I’m excited! If you know my family, you know that we absolutely LOVE having babies around. But this time the baby will be my nephew! Yay!
Stupidly I haven’t been keeping in touch with my bro and SIL like I should be to check up on them and the baby. But I got to reading SIL’s blog (which I haven’t done in a while…shame on me!), and came across this super freaking adorable blog post about their last ultrasound. Seriously, you gotta read this post! It’s the cutest story EVER! And I am now in the loop that my nephew’s nickname will be “bolabola”…that means meatball in Tagalog. My Lolo came up with that…which is one of many reasons I love my Lolo!
Here’s the latest ultrasound image, stolen from SIL’s facebook…hehe.
Isn’t he adorable??? Yes, yes he is!
Well, that concludes today’s blog post. I know I have been MAJORLY neglecting this blog, and I apologize for that. I’ve been uber focused on my business lately so all of my attention has been there. But I promise that as soon as I get a little more organized (or the next season of America’s Next Top Model starts), I’ll be blogging regularly again.
October, brudder and his wifey will be having their first child! Yay! November, mommy and daddy will be flying back from the Philippines to see their new grandbaby so it will be Thanksgiving with the whole fam. December will be my turn to fly to the Philippines to spend Christmas with the parents. January is yet to be determined, though I’m sure I’ll come up with something to do. And then February is the return of my long lost hubby. Throw in a trip to Disneyland each month, and the occasional meander to Sea World (yay for passes!), and I think I’ve given myself a fair amount of distraction for while hubby’s gone.
, which I had checked out from the library. That, and a nice nap on my flight to Orlando, made the time pass fairly quickly. Before I knew it, I was at MCO being greeted by hubby’s dad. And from there the hurricane of wedding events began.
, while everyone else was watching the bride walk down the aisle, I turned my attention to the groom. Can you not just feel the love in his eyes? Seriously folks, this is the kind of love that makes you sick when you’re in a lonely mood, that’s how awesome it was. Of course, I wanted to die from missing my hubby right at that moment, and for much of the duration of the evening. But I sucked it up and had a good time…with the help of two glasses of wine and fun conversation with K and Grandma V. I was pretty busy meeting tons of in-laws I hadn’t met yet anyways. Wow, hubby has a lot of family. But they were all super fun and I was glad I got to meet them all.
