Friday, January 27, 2012

Reintegration revisited.


So, Will has been home for five days, and is on day four of reintegration training.

Remember when I talked about sitting through hours of briefings and Power Point slides and warnings that he might try to kill us or buy a motorcycle?

Well, when the soldiers get home, they immediately begin seven consecutive partial work days where they go in to hear all the same stuff. While one purpose is to get the information out there and have a chance to get some necessary paperwork and medical screenings done, its bigger purpose to ease the transition home. Going to work for a few hours a day for a week is far less jarring than being gone for a year to suddenly being home 24/7.

And as I've discovered this week, I need it just as much as he does. Maybe more. I might be the one who attempts to murder him.

I've been doing my own thing on my own schedule for the past year. If I wanted to see what my friends are up to on Facebook, I did. If I wanted to blog, I did. If I decided to shampoo the carpet some random morning, I could. But now he's home. Just hanging out. ALL THE TIME. Most of me wants to spend every second with him and soak up his being home-ness. But part of me wants to read blogs and Facebook for awhile without feeling guilty for neglecting him.

These hours he's at work give me time to myself. And I need it.

Also, now that the first heady days of reunion are over, the same things about him that annoyed me before he left are still annoying. (And I'm sure the same is true for him.) And living in a crap hole (literally!) for a year can lead to some bad habits. After his first dinner home, he swiped a big pile of crumbs from the table to the floor. Deliberately. Like our dining room was suddenly Medieval Times.

There may have been some yelling about common courtesy and what are you thinking, you barbarian??? I'll never tell.

He came home about 20 minutes ago. In that time he's interrupted me to show me a box (just a box...just because it was folded oddly), a cord, a stuffed dragon (really?), to tell me stories about riding the bus this morning at work, and to ask if we were out of chips.

I may have told him to PLEASE FOR THE LOVE ALL THINGS HOLY GIVE ME 15 MINUTES OF PEACE SO I CAN WRITE.

Ahem.

So the moral of the story?

They say the week of reintegration is for the soldier. I am discovering that it's more for me.

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