A little over a year ago ...

Mr. S's homecoming from Iraq. March 4, 2005.

I just realized today that Mr. S had been home a year. A year!* It's hard to believe.

So it seems as good a time as any to center a post around my relationship with Mr. S. A good, juicy post. A good, juicy, procrastinating post.

First: I have a wonderful love with Mr. S (which I will henceforth refer to as our marriage, though I am referring more to that nice sweet thing that exists at the core of it). It's a beautiful marriage, something so good and right, like an ee cummings poem or ... I don't know, uh, a bunch of high notes on a harp.

Second: Being average folks just like everyone else, Mr. S and I have done our damnedest to run that beautiful marriage right into the ground. We've thrown things at it, chipped at it, taken chunks out of it, and generally behaved the way most married people do: like ungrateful asses. You know the type. You may have even seen the type in the mirror. Go ahead, self! you say. Burden that perfect marriage a little more! Take advantage of its good nature! It can take it! Perhaps we should rack up a little credit-card debt, or purchase a house and car we can't really afford! Maybe have a baby or six! Or perhaps gain fifty pounds! Or develop some kind of raging drug addiction! Or suddenly buy a motorcycle and start wearing leather pants!

And then the day comes when all the harp strings snap, and you have no one to blame but yourself. Well, yourself, and that despicable hussy. But I digress.

Single people who don't get what I'm saying will know later. Married people who "don't get what I'm saying" should stop reading this blog, because I don't like dirty liars.

Because I am NOT a dirty liar, I present you with ...

THE MR. AND MS. SCHNOZZ TIMELINE OF PAIN

May 1999: Mr. S and I meet. We have the worst first date ever. All Mr. S talks about is his ex-girlfriend, whom he dated for five years and broke up with in an engagement ultimatum from her, and how he wants to marry her ... but he's just not ready. At nineteen, I am apparently too stupid to write him off entirely, so we become nonromantic jogging partners. He is very lucky he got me when I was dumb.

June 1999: Nonromantic jogging partners who make out a lot and kind of go on dates and stuff. Kind of. Whatever.

July 1999: We are officially girlfriend and boyfriend! For all of five minutes.

August 1999: I tire of Mr. S drinking constantly and not being over his ex (what took me so long? I clearly had no self-esteem) and break up with him. He is drinking heavily these days, enjoying all the party days his ex forbade him from, so he doesn't even notice I'm gone for about three weeks. Mr. S has some growing up to do.

Spring Break 2000: Mr. S and I go to Florida together. We also go on dates here and there, but I am cautious and so is he. Plus he is also still not over his ex. Believe it or not. What a lame-o. She wasn't even that nice or anything. She was pretty hot, though. OK, like REALLY hot. I'll give him that. But hotness isn't everything. As he should have realized SOONER.

Christmas 2000: Someone calls me Mr. S's girlfriend at Christmas. He corrects them, saying, "She's not my girlfriend." Lots of family members laugh simultaneously. The situation is getting a little ridiculous.

Spring Break 2001: Mr. S and I go to Florida AGAIN. We have also seen each other on Christmases and other occasions. We are still sort-of seeing each other, sort-of not, with no real commitment, and occasional dates with other people, but very slowly, like stalagmite-formation slowly, our relationship has deepened, almost without us being aware of it. Miraculously, Mr. S has managed to finally get over his ex, setting no speed records whatsoever. He has also managed to grow up quite a bit, and no longer drinks as if he has a death wish. His better qualities, mainly his hilariousness and his additional hilariousness, are surfacing nicely. He mentions that he would kind of maybe like to be my boyfriend. Seeing as we have been casually dating for almost two years, this seems like an OK idea to me, but I make him wait until May anyway, just to punish him.

May 15, 2001: We're officially girlfriend and boyfriend again! Woo! Our families do not seem very impressed. Probably because we have been going on vacations together for years now. And because I was always at the family Christmas. But it is exciting to us, anyway, that we are finally ready to commit again. We are instantly very serious, as we have gotten our years of dating pretty much out of the way already. We only date for a short time before ...

August 2001: Mr. S publicly proposes on top of the Hoover Dam. (His logic was that restaurants and other venues change frequently, but the dam, baby ... the dam is forever. Thus we can visit it whenever we like.) He impresses the crap out of me by proposing in verse. ORIGINAL verse. That he has typed up on pretty butterfly paper and FRAMED. That would be nothing coming from me, but Mr. S struggles with everyday English. Up until this point, I have had no idea that he can even rhyme words. Everything is awesome! We're going to have lots of money, and I don't even have to work, and we can get a house. Man, this whole "life" thing is EASY. Marrying a pilot who works for a major airline is fun!

September 2001: Holy effing crap. Those towers just FELL DOWN. Along with Mr. S's excellent, would-have-been-high-paying airline job. Every plan we had ... poof. Gone. Suddenly everything is a mess. Panic ensues. I spent a lot of time chanting to myself that some people DIED and I should just shut up and be GRATEFUL already. Then panicking. Then more chanting. Mr. S takes it much, much harder, leading to a very long depression ... and later, a military enlistment. But quit skipping ahead. We're not there yet.

October 2001-December 2001: Mr. S, honey, I still love you. I mean, I don't love you as much as I did when you were rich, and I'm a little put out about having to get a job and stuff, but whatever, I guess I could use my college degree or something. Should we still get married? All of our plans are ruined. But we should still get married. I love you!

Summer or Fall 2002, I Really Can't Remember: Mr. S and I move in together. I design and edit pages at the local newspaper; poor Mr. S works a series of horrible jobs, including a stint at Wal-Mart. He is miserable. Mr. S is hired by a smaller airline. It ain't the big bucks, but it's something. Mr. S is then furloughed by that same airline before he even finishes training. Mr. S's depression on the employment front deepens. Discussions on his joining the military escalate. I of course do not want him to join. He is still so angry about Sept. 11 that he feels compelled to join. I feel that blowing up some poor schmuck in Afghanistan is probably not the best way to get revenge on a bunch of terrorists who are already dead. Ultimately I agree that he can enlist after our wedding. This is hard for me; I am a huge snob who never realized I could become a military wife. Being a military wife is for other people. Or so I think at the time. Because I am a dumb snob.

November 2002: We get married in the wedding to beat all weddings. We choose to wed at our own reception, so plenty of food is served and big-band music is played before anyone even gets hitched. The ushers dress as members of the Mafia. Hilarity ensues, including but not limited to a very very drunk bridesmaid with two broken dress straps (and the consequent flashing), the rolling-down-the-street of a certain giant concrete planter (and the consequent threats to call the police), and a striptease to Nelly's "Hot in Herre" by a believe-it-or-not-he's-dead-sober Mr. S (and the consequent crowd of women stuffing money in his underwear, including MY OWN GRANDMOTHER). Mr. S makes $400, and I am both out-of-my-mind amused and stunned at the overwhelming horniness of all of my fifty-year-old aunts. Who knew?







November 2002-October 2003: We enjoy a year of wedded bliss ... sort of. While we're happy with one another, Mr. S is not at all happy with his continually bad employment situation, and I can't say I blame him. For a while, he is so desperate for flight hours that he flies skydivers for less money than it costs him to drive down to the jumping area ... and at night, he sleeps in a tent on the airport lawn, because he can't afford a hotel room. During this time, Mr. S joins the Marines. He also gains back his job at the smallish airline (not the huge airline he worked for pre 9-11). I am already so tired of 9-11 overshadowing our lives at this point, but the repercussions are far from over.

November 2003: Mr. S leaves for boot camp just a few days after our first anniversary. We only speak to each other twice over the next three months. The rest is communicated in letters. Mr. S's mom delivers a present to my house every week, along with a prewritten note from Mr. S. He bought them all before he left, one for every seven days that he is gone. When Mr. S calls at Christmas, I don't recognize his voice; it is too wrecked from all the yelling at boot camp. He sounds as awful as I feel. Boot camp is not a good time. I'm not sure even deployment was that miserable.

February 2004: Mr. S returns from boot camp. I had mailed him his cell phone so he could call me; we spend the three hours he spends delayed in the Chicago airport on the phone, just catching up. I pick him up at the airport, trembling with nerves, and it is wonderful to see him again. He is different--skinnier, harder--but still him, much to my relief. I shock the crap out of him with our remodeled kitchen (the project that kept me sane in his absence). We get a pizza and watch the Simpsons, and it's pretty much like old times. But it isn't long before ...

Easter 2004: Mr. S announces to his family that he's being deployed to Iraq already, completely ruining Easter brunch in a very bad judgment call on his part. In a side note, we also get our picture taken with the Easter Bunny. Which seems like a fun idea, until I actually sit on the Easter Bunny's hard knee and remember that there's a man behind those mesh eyes, and get really really creeped out.

June-ish? 2004: Mr. S leaves for deployment training in Wisconsin. I drive up to see him often. He drives down to see me often. But we've already started the separation process. Later, we count and realize we only saw each other on about fifty separate days in 2004.

August 2004-March 2005: Mr. S leaves for Iraq. We choose to say goodbye at home, in private, making me one of the only (if not THE only) wives not in attendance at the farewell. Once we've said everything that needed to be said, I literally shove him away and out the door, in a hurry to just get this over with. I cry for all of five minutes before entering the Magical Land of Coping Mechanism Numbness. I spend the deployment months in a weird, numb, don't-look-down haze. I struggle with paying bills on time and shoveling snow and all the things Mr. S used to do, and my heart enters my mouth anytime there is a knock on the door, which fortunately isn't often. I manage to stay decently busy, and I actually even have some fun with friends and family, and I try to keep my anger in check when people ask idiot questions like, "Do you worry that he'll get hurt?" Mostly I just put one foot in front of the other, over and over again, day after day, knowing that it won't last forever, no matter what the bad feeling in my stomach says. Mr. S and I talk a lot on the phone, and even use webcams on a few occasions.** I spend our second anniversary alone, and once again Mr. S is gone for the holidays (last year it was boot camp). By the end of the deployment, I am institutionalized--so used to the deployment that Mr. S's homecoming makes me half joyous and half afraid of the shock his presence will bring. No one would understand this fear if I say anything, so I keep my mouth shut and try to act 100% happy that I am going to suddenly be living with someone again.



I wonder whether Mr. S will come back different. I worry about whether he'll be the same person. But I am reassured by photographic evidence that he has not changed a bit.



March 2005: Mr. S returns. I shock the crap out of him with a completely remodeled basement that includes a 92" movie theater, forever trapping us in movie theater dependency (there is just no going back). Mr. S and I go through a few months of readjustment, but nothing major, nothing as scary as what I expected. We are mostly just happy to be alive and together.

Fall 2005: Never content to just be happy married people who aren't kicking the crap out of our sweet, high-notes-on-a-harp marriage, Mr. S and I decide to move to STL. We commence selling our house, which is absolute hell. We also commence fighting, because Mr. S is the detail-oriented anal one, and I'm the one who is actually home day to day, not out flying planes. So I do the houseselling tasks, badly, because I'm disorganized, and Mr. S criticizes me, badly, because he could have done it better, had he been available to do so in the first place. We manage to sell our house without getting divorced.

December 2005-January 2006: We move to STL. Our relationship does not improve right away; we are too busy remodeling, which puts Mr. S in a very foul mood indeed. I am overwhelmed with living in a new place, to the point that I cannot concentrate on my editing at all, and get very little work done; we fight about this as well. I spend half my time getting used to my new city and half my time wishing we had never taken the risk of moving--and wondering if we will ever get along happily here, the way we did in our old house.

February 2006: I still feel stressed sometimes and am capable of crying a lot over really stupid things, but the light at the end of the tunnel has appeared. One day I wake up and realize that Mr. S and I are almost back to normal. He makes me laugh again, and I make him laugh again, and there are no angry silences, and no one is slamming dishes or arguing over shelving units--well, at least not most of the time. He is cooking me food and I am cleaning the house for him and suddenly everyone is working together, and grinning at each other, and teaching one another to butt-dance like the girls in the video. (Well, that was me teaching HIM, and he is HORRIBLE at it. But it's really funny to watch.) The focus on romance returns with a vengeance, and there are candles and learn-to-dance-salsa DVDs and provolone cheese, which is pretty romantic in my opinion.

March 2006: Everything dies down almost completely, and that harp o' love can be heard clearly once again. Mr. S and I look at each other and for once in our idiot lives, appreciate each other for all the hard work we've put into this life together. Goofy smiles appear. Midsections are squeezed. I am so glad we are home again. Let there now be a giant gap in this timeline. I am tired of timeline-worthy events. If you look the timeline over, perhaps you can see why.


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*This means the masthead version of me blew out her first birthday candles on Friday. Ah, masthead Schnozz. You're a year older and you haven't changed a bit. Not one new wrinkle! Which is why I like you so much.
**I will never think of webcams as silly stupid accessories again. It was so wonderful to see his face. On the days we got to use webcams to talk, I would positively be floating on air the rest of the day.