My husband is on block leave right now. At first we planned to visit family, but who wants to drive towards bad weather in January? We decided to wait for spring or summer. Then we thought we might use the time to go visit friends, but we realized that this would've put us traveling into D.C. on Inauguration Day. Bad idea. Eventually we just decided to stay home.
My husband and I are both homebodies. We don't particularly like to travel, or go to the movies, or go out to restaurants. We both like being at home. And after deployment, we both thought that what my husband needed was relaxation. No stress of driving 18 hours to get to his parents' house. No exhausting vacation plans. Just him, a few beers, and the TV remote.
What I didn't count on was how much time that would leave him to think...
My husband is in one of those unique jobs in the Army that deploys no matter what's going on in the world, and frequently. I shock-blogged that we learned about his next deployment while he still had six months left on the one he was on! When his unit got home last month from this deployment, they immediately started planning for the next one, even before block leave started.
The bad thing about setting aside our block leave for relaxation and laziness is that my husband won't stop thinking about work. Any time he's quiet for more than two minutes, I know he is already stressing about everything that needs to be done before they leave again. He is mentally working himself through training schedules and leadership strategies.
He is not relaxing.
I sincerely did not expect this when I suggested that we just stay home for leave. Perhaps if we were at his parents' house or in D.C. or at Disneyworld he would have less time to fret. Our plan backfired a little bit, in a way I didn't foresee.
I will keep this in mind the next time I think that staying home will be relaxing.
