How to Be a Wife from...0 Miles Away

Part 1.

Here it is. New chapter started, bags unpacked, new and unfamiliar house settled into, and a husband that slept next to me all night. (The novelty! I was getting used to a double bed shared with an actual battered teddy bear. This arrangement feels a little more grown up.) I'm sitting in our new (for the summer) kitchen, battling jet lag and still wearing what I call my "single girl" pajamas. (Flannel. In ridiculous humidity. I have "wife" pajamas around here somewhere, but oh God...flannel.) Last night I tossed and turned into the early hours, overwhelmed and buzzing from all that is now and all that is to come. I'm like that the eve before something big. I run my life through my head like a film in technicolor, wondering where I would have slowed down and where I would have edited heavily. I vibrate with fear, hope, excitement, trepidation, and anticipation. It sounds a bit dramatic and anything but restful, but hey...have you met me?

Traveling here yesterday was sort of a milestone on its own. I use to be terrified of solo traveling. And now, after of year of boarding planes at least twice a month and getting a routine down- I can literally do it in my sleep. Literally. I have. And hallucinating once with a ridiculous fever and an accidental overdose of NyQuil- BUT I GOT WHERE I WAS GOING, ALIVE, AND THAT IS THE POINT. I realized yesterday as I boarded my second plane and smiled warily at the young man sitting next to me clutching a Bible, (because I was clutching a filthy smut book and was trying to figure out how to crack the spine without him noticing I was essentially reading porn on the plane) that this would most likely be one of the last times I travel alone. I ordered a glass of wine at that moment in a sort of toast to the past and a welcome to whatever lay ahead of me in the future. The flight attendant handed it to me with a smile and refused payment.

"Oh no you don't!" she trilled. "The other attendants told me you are finally reuniting with your husband! It must have been so hard for you, him being deployed and all that."

What.

This was when I realized I talk waaaay to much to random people when I travel. I indeed had struck up a conversation with a flight attendant as we waited in line to board. I was clinging to a bag of pottery in my hand and casually told her it was something my husband made in California, and I was bringing it to him after we had been apart for a year. "It's time for us to be together again. It's been a war! It's been hell. I'm ready for it all to be over."

I didn't mean an actual war. 

After I explained it to the confused flight attendant, she was so flustered she just gave me the wine free anyway. Which sort of ruined the whole thing because I felt like a world class douche and Mr. Billy Graham to the right was eyeing me with contempt as I sipped it shame-faced. So, because he already thought I was Jezebel, I cracked open my smut book and read 200 pages.

A nice celebration, I think.

Anyway.

I came home with my husband to a beautiful apartment he filled with things I like. Boxes of Annie's Mac N' Cheese lined the counter, a rose' wine was in the fridge, a pile of Women's Health magazines by the bed, (ironic, no? Wine...macaroni and cheese...you get it, right?) AAND he actually bought me coffee. Which he hates that I drink. And usually fights me tooth and nail on, and I end up sneaking it like cocaine. But there it was...the future sitting there on the counter...a bag of coffee. (Half decaf, but he's trying.)

So, this morning I woke up in a new bed. I unpacked everything from my suitcases and realized that the only thing I forgot was my bag of make-up. I promptly called Brett at the office.

"So, I left my face in San Francisco." I practically whined into the phone.

"I'm pretty sure I saw your face this morning. On...your face."

"Not funny. I'm serious. I don't even think you should come home. I have NOTHING. Like, not even blush. You just...you can't look. Don't come home."

"We'll replace it, for God sake."

"YES, BUT THAT IS GOING TO BE ABOUT A MILLION DOLLARS AND I WILL STILL BE FACE-LESS UNTIL THEN."

(DISCLAIMER: I actually go without make up quite a bit. But, in true Irish fashion I am pale and freckled and benefit from a little enhancement now and again. I am not a diva by any means, but my first day with my newly home from deployment husband I would like to have lips and maybe eyelashes too.)

We ended up laughing over my "predicament" and made a plan to buy me a new face on the way to dinner tonight. Which isn't half bad for a first day together.

So, new face, new life. And who knows, maybe I'll go for a new shade of lipstick. Shake it up. buy colors and things I have never used before.

Let's see where this goes. I'm up for the ride.