The other night, I was watching War Stories Iraq: The Homefront to the Frontlines. The show followed Marines in Iraq and the families they left behind at Camp Lejeune. One of the profiled wives went out to the garage, started a truck and let it run for a few minutes. She explained to Ollie North that her husband had left instructions to start his truck once a week. The segment reminded me of something.
My husband and I are 24 fanatics. We're hooked, like so many others. In fact, 24 is the only primetime network television show that we watch.
When my husband deployed, he had only one request, and it was a simple one. My husband asked that I DVR the season so he could watch it when he came home.
"Consider it done," I said. Little did I know....
I decided not to watch the season in real time, but to wait until my husband came home so we could watch it together.
I didn't pay much attention to the DVR because I knew that it was set to record all episodes. One night, I happened to look at the DVR machine when I knew that 24 was on. I noticed that the red "record" light wasn't lit up. I picked up the remote and dialed through the recorded episodes. Sure enough, about halfway into the season, the DVR had stopped recording the episodes.
Houston, we have a problem. A big one.
Anyone who watches 24 know that if you miss just one episode, you've missed a lot. I was borderline panicked. The one tiny thing that my husband requested I do before he left, I had screwed up.
Well, we'd just have to wait for the DVD release, purchase the DVDs and watch them then. Still, I beat myself up and felt guility.
Sure enough, about two or three days after my husband returned, caught up on his sleep and settled back in, he said, "let's start on 24." I sheepishly told him what happened, or what hadn't happen in this case.
Luckily, one of my blog readers had the DVDs and sent them to me a few weeks later so that my husband and I could watch them, but I was still disappointed that it hadn't worked out as planned. Things happen and sometimes it just doesn't work out.
My husband doesn't need to tell me how to manage the household, and all that entails, while he's away, it comes naturally to those of us who have to do it solo over and over again. But, he did put in one request, which wasn't met. True, it wasn't life-altering, earth-shattering or that important in the big scheme of things, but I still hated what had happened. I was more upset about it than my husband.
What are some of the things that your spouse asks you to do while he/she is away? Any quirky requests? What have you not done that you were supposed to do, and how did you handle it when your spouse returned?
