2 years!

So I forgot to post about it yesterday, but it was a very important day. Thak has been home from his 3rd tour in Iraq for 2 years! That's a first. We've never had two years between deployments. We've never had two years to just be together. Considering we've been together for about seven years, that's saying something. Had we stayed at Ft. Stewart (which wasn't an option after Thak's promotion), we'd be midway through his 4th tour by now, but we came here, and there are no orders anywhere on the horizon.

I often hear this statistic bantered about among senior wives, but I have no idea where it comes from. Apparently, many people in a position to study this type of thing, say that it usually takes 2 years to get back to normal after a 1 year deployment. That's probably why the Secretary of the Army used to say we got 12 months of deployment for 24 months of dwell time, but as everyone knows, when we were at Ft. Stewart, they openly changed that to 15 months of deployment for 12 months of dwell time. Of course, most of that dwell time is spent preparing for the next deployment, so you never really get off the hamster wheel. It is a very hopeless way to live when they cut orders for the next deployment before the current one even ends. Basically, the thing that stands out, and actually makes a lot of sense to me, is that by that rule of thumb that the senior wives love to talk about, those of us who have really done the work of the Army during the war's ugliest years didn't even have time to actually recoup from one deployment before being thrown right into another. (Anyone want to guess why divorce lawyer is the most lucrative profession, other than bar owner, in the area surrounding Ft. Stewart?)

While we really hate Ft. Bliss, and often wonder if a 4th tour actually would have been BETTER than coming here, it is lovely (although a little surreal) to watch the deployment rotation roll along as it always has, and have it include people who aren't us. We've done ours (and probably a few other people's, too), and finally, they're leaving us alone... well, for the most part. Two years out, it's different than it was a year out. The panic is gone. It's like, we can almost believe that we won't be going through that again any minute. I don't think we'll actually fully believe it until Thak is out of the Army, and it's almost believable now. We actually try to plan things now without banking on Thak not being here soon.

Two years out. That's outstanding. I can't wait until it's like 10 years out, and we won't even remember half this shit anymore.