The end of a deployment is always excruciating. You do anything you can to keep yourself busy and to stop from watching the clock. And the last few days are the worst, the days when you're pretty sure your spouse has left the country of origin and is on the long, circuitous journey home.
And that's where I'm at...but I'm doing it while on bed rest.
I have been in bed for two weeks, after learning that I could potentially have my baby pre-term. And bed rest is not exactly the fastest or most distracting way to spend the end of a deployment. Especially not when your bed faces a large-faced clock, tick ticking the minutes away.
I have done a pretty good job of staying calm, but now that the call has come in with a potential arrival time, my heart is about to burst out of my skin. This is the time when, during previous deployments, I would bustle around the house getting rid of nervous energy and making sure everything looked nice and was in decent order. Or start shaving and primping and painting fingernails.
Instead I am still stuck in bed staring at that clock!
I told my husband the other day that, because I've been in bed, I have a lot of horrible chores he'll have to tackle when he gets home: fixing the broken garage door, getting our cars inspected, clearing the car's title at the DMV, assembling a stroller, etc. He said even the DMV sounds better than deployment.
I hope he still feels that way when he gets home and I put him to work!
I am ready to stop looking at the clock and counting down the days until the end of the deployment. Now I can focus on watching the When Will Our Baby Be Born clock instead...
Those were two rough clocks to watch at the same time, let me tell you.
