The first "weekend"

It's been a few days since I've blogged...it's been my hubby's "weekend"!  I am most definitely not getting used to this schedule yet.  For the next 3 months, he's on rotating shifts so he gets to learn everything, but I'm afraid when he gets onto a permanent schedule that if he doesn't have weekends off that we'll never get to do anything together.  How do people deal with this?  Will I have to take days off work?  Will he?  I don't know how families with kids make this work.

One of the first things Hubby Blue said when he got off work last...what day was it?  Tuesday, I guess?  Tuesday morning, when he gets off work, he says, "Hey, did I tell you that Monday is a range day?"  Monday.  Monday as in your day off?!  Ahhhh!!!  Did I not read all about this on every blog, in every book, in everything I read about police jobs?  Training, court, whatever on your days off.  So, yes, Monday, my husband's day off (also a day off for me: thank you, Christopher Columbus), he'll be at the shooting range.  So much for any all-day plans!  It's not the end of the world, it's just sort of surreal that all the things I read about the police family experience (the worry, the schedule, and so on) -- it's all happening to me/us just as other people who have been there said it would.

Wednesday night was sort of like HB's "Saturday" so we went out for dinner and a movie.  For me, it was sort of a nice little mid-week treat!  It was really different to get out in the middle of the week (thank goodness I'm finally at a point where I'm not in grad school or taking extra classes or anything so I actually had the time to go out on a weeknight).........but our choice of movie was NOT stellar.  We saw End of Watch, a police movie, and I won't give away the ending, but let's just say it was basically my worst fears, portrayed on the big screen.  It was a really good movie, but wow.  I cried for a long time after it was over, and what can you say about it?  Other than the fact that HB doesn't work for a department like the LAPD (which is where the characters in this movie worked), there's still the worry that you NEVER know what kinds of crazy, awful things might happen.  A lot of people talk about just having to put your faith in God, but that seems like an awfully easy answer for a really big fear.  I guess I wish I had just one other friend who was also a police wife and could relate to some of these fears I have.  Because right now, it sort of feels like as much as our friends and family are really supportive of Hubby Blue and me, no one quite understands everything.

Anyway, Hubby is working nights this week, and he went back in last night.  This is only the 4th night I've spent alone, EVER (somehow in the two years we've been married, whenever he's been gone, I've managed to either stay somewhere else or have someone else come stay with me...I am crazy), so I'm still not thrilled about it.  I'd been doing laundry all night and left one load going in the washer when I went upstairs to go to bed.  I wasn't up there 10 minutes when I heard a loud noise come from downstairs.  I panicked, remembered Hubby's "I will leave this gun out for you but don't try to clear the house yourself" speech, and called him.  This didn't seem like a "someone's-breaking-in-call-the-police" situation, so I just didn't know what to do!  I told him what had happened, and very calmly, he goes, "Just take the gun and go down and see what it was."  Me.  Pick up the gun.  Walk around the house with it and be prepared to shoot it if someone is in my house!!!  This is why he's the cop in this family.  Things like this never phase him.  Anyway, can you imagine?!  Well, let me just say how proud I was of myself for being able to do exactly that.  It turned out the noise I heard was the bottle of laundry detergent falling off the washing machine, which I'd suspected it might have been in the first place, but still, not the thing you want to hear when you're home alone!  I called him back, told him everything was fine, and went to bed.  Uggghhhhhh when will I get used to this???

Not tonight, that's for sure!  Hubby is working again but I am going to a rehearsal dinner and spending the night at my parents' house.  I am pretty bummed he can't go with me, but such is the way it goes, right?  I am still super proud of him and the career he's chosen, and if this is what makes him happy, then I am still happy too.  We'll survive.  I'll just be praying like crazy for him on his first Friday night on the job!

Until next time,
Wife in Blue