The City looked like it was going to take a long time to respond to our claim, leaving us with a mess of a house for months on end. They wanted more quotes from contractors, our insurance information, detailed photos, the list kept going. Then my husband sent them an e-mail which asked them to CC me on correspondence because he's going out of the country on military duty and the very next day they called with an offer! I can't help but thinking its because they felt bad making a military family wait and they decided to settle. They didn't give us the full amount of our claim, but close enough that with some careful budget planning I should be able to get the house put back together.
Hubby left last night for Germany for three weeks for his annual training with the Reserve. It really stinks to have his training in the summer. In Alaska, there aren't that many weeks of summer and having him gone for three of them really cuts into the summer. I am going to try and get the house back together while he is gone and begin studying for the Patent Bar. For whatever reason, when he is gone I am way more productive. I think it's because instead of getting home from work and trying to figure out what we both want to do, waiting around until we have consensus or worse yet, sitting in front of the TV, there is only me and I don't have excuses for not getting things done. When he's gone it's so quiet that unless I'm doing something it's really easy to be lonely.
One of the other advantages of being a military wife on memorial day are all of the sales. Lowes has 10% off for military, which I'm going to use to replace our ruined washer and dryer from the flood. I'll also pick up a few things for the flooded room.
Of course there are many disadvantages to being a military wife. I still feel isolated and a little bitter at times. We have been lucky so far in that he hasn't been deployed. This is his units year to go so the constant threat of that happening really hangs over us all the time. I was actually enrolled in law school last fall with tickets to move to Arizona and start my 1L year at ASU. I had the perfect schedule of classes and everything was falling into place. But, then we found out that he might have to be deployed as soon as October and there was just no way that I could deal with 1L year and him being deployed so I called the Dean, explained things, was denied a deferral and dropped out before paying my deposit.
This year I gave up on applying together. Hubby's window of deployment extends until this October so he can still be deployed at any point between now and then. We started saving money towards my education so I wouldn't have as many loans, I switched engineering jobs to one where I am far happier and even though I make less money I don't come home every day wishing I had not woken up and gone to work that morning. Once the threat of deployment is over and his unit is in its reset year rather than deployment year we'll sit down and weigh our options again. It's kind of nice to be approaching this with such a financially responsible plan. With the economy what it is, I really worry for a lot of law students who are taking out $100k+ loans, with no guarantee that they'll ever be able to pay them back.
I'm so proud of my husband and while I never truly love the fact that he's in the military, I know what it means to him. It has changed the path our lives have taken, and definitely added a lot of stress. But I don't think delaying law school for two years will ultimately be something I look back on with regret. I'm only 25, and while I sometimes think that's old and I've wasted time waiting, it really isn't, I have plenty of time to take care of my family and my career.
