Putting life on hold

I realized today that, in a lot of ways, I put my life on hold when Einstein is out of town.

The realization came as I was trying to make some financial decisions (nothing major, just trying to decide what to do with extra gas and grocery money that we save when he is gone). I was looking at our finances, playing around with different scenarios, and I thought, well, I will just leave it until he gets home. Thankfully, he is never gone for more than a few months at a time, so I have the luxury of putting off decisions...but in this particular case, it is dumb to wait until he gets home. And since his communication is pretty limited, I don't want to waste his time with the decision. And then I realized...wow, I am putting off a lot of things, while he's gone...

Besides cleaning the house and shaving my legs. there are a few things that I really shouldn't be dragging my feet on, mostly professional decisions that have meaning for our life together. None of them are things that would drastically change our life, they are just things I would like to talk over with him. There is also a laundry list of silly things that I could totally take care of and he wouldn't even notice:

-Finding wall decor for our bedroom
-picking a color to paint the guest room
-buying more memory for my computer
-putting away our summer clothes
-reorganizing the kitchen drawers
-buying a new comforter for our bed

These are not earth shattering decisions. They aren't even things that we would discuss much. I just miss his input and help.

But that isn't enough of an excuse. He's gone too often for me to put life on hold when he's not here.

The other side of the fence

Okay, it is time to come clean.

I'm that girl. The one who volunteers for everything. Who never met a raffle ticket or bake sale that she wouldn't volunteer for. The one who made meals whenever she was called, put her name on the list to organize, volunteered to organize and decorate for events...and felt superior to everyone else because of it.

Or I should say, I used to be that girl.

New base + new squadron + new job = I've become the girl** I used to disdain- the one who says "Look, I'm busy! And what has the squadron done for me?" I used to hate that attitude of entitlement; I had a hard time with people who just showed up to social things, and never put their name down to volunteer. If you wanted something from the squadron, you should give back to it!

But seriously, I can't. I just can't. I've got obligations at work and in our parish and voluteering in the squadron is something that I want to do, but I just can't. And I hate that I used to judge people like me... and I'll be honest, I'm still sort of judging myself. I find myself hesitating to take advantage of squadron resources (or to show up to any events at all) because I haven't volunteered for a single thing, and I'm probably not going to any time soon.

** I would use the gender neutral term here, except I've never met a male spouse who was involved in the squadron spouses groups....lots of great male spouses who were supportive, awesome gentleman who go out of their way to help their friends, yes...but the people decorating for the kids Christmas Party are always women.