Time Between Saturdays

I have realized that my life lately consists mostly of a countdown to the weekend. Even though I'm not exactly toiling away during the week (I mostly hang out with my cat, workout, lay out, beautify myself, clean a little, shop, and drink wine and watch bad TV) , I'm also alone Monday through Friday. In a town where I don't know very many people (and, of course, people my age tend to have pesky J-O-B-s and limited hang-out time).

Before my fiance started TBS (The Basic School, essentially Marine Officer Training), we joked about Time Between Saturdays. We had heard from Marines who had gone through TBS that they tended to be incredibly busy during the week, making mid-week visits difficult, especially since I chose not to live close to base. So essentially, going in, I knew I'd only see him on the weekends. Of course, when we made the decision, we had just gone through OCS, which was essentially ten weeks of incredibly limited communication, so the thought of being able to talk on the phone regularly and knowing that he'd have most weekends off sounded like total bliss.

Until we actually got here.

I'm just going to throw it out there: TBS is way harder than OCS. Sure, you can't talk during OCS-- but you know what to expect, and you somewhat get used to it. I didn't expect phone calls, and I knew I wouldn't see him at all, so I adapted. But now, I'm spoiled. I get the weekends with him, making the weekdays extra difficult. It's hard to go back to being alone (well, with my lovely kitty) after being around my baby all weekend! And, let's face it-- the weekends are never long enough. It takes forever for Friday night to roll around, but next thing we know, it's Sunday afternoon and we're scrambling to get him ready for the next week. And next thing I know, I'm eating fruit for dinner because I'm too lazy to cook anything, drinking wine and watching bad TV.

This afternoon, we had a conversation about how fast the weekends go, and how much it sucks to spend so much time apart. We both freely acknowledge that we're very spoiled; pre-Marines (to get into the spirit of things, I'm making up my own acronym: PM), we were both not working for around four months. Those four months were total bliss. From September to January, we would literally wake up every morning, whenever we felt like it, turn to each other and ask: "What do you want to do today?" and then we would do it. We did everything from scuba diving classes to hiking to indoor rock climbing to taking long walks to going out to fun dinners to singing kareoke until 4 am. We went from that to not seeing each other at all to this weekend-to-weekend existence. Thinking about that PM time makes it even harder to get through the hard, lonely TBS days.

It's hard to remember sometimes, though, that when people have full-time jobs, they have to make choices. We probably see each other about the same as we did when we were both in the corporate world (since our schedules would hardly ever match, we'd usually see each other in the middle of the night). Yes, we're in this mostly irritating, very structured training environment, and we only see each other on the weekends. But it's nice, for once, to look forward to Fridays. To have Saturdays mean coffee in bed and a leisurely breakfast while catching up with my fiance.  And I just keep thinking how lucky I am to have a partner who was willing to take chances and put himself through hell and start all over again, just so we can find our place in the world and a lifestyle that makes us happier.

It's Official!

I'm a Marine-wife-to-be! We got engaged last weekend! I'm still a little in shock (and incredibly excited!) I took a break from staring at my beautiful engagement ring long enough to post this. The adventure continues...