Deployment

WAG guilt.

~ oliveoylnavywife ~ 14 Comments

I’m worried. I think I may be a rubbish wife and/or cold hearted cowbag.

I keep seeing, everywhere, stuff about how other WAGs (wives and girlfriends) are proud of their sailor. I see endless posts and gifs and memes and poems and songs ALL stating, without a doubt, that their service person is a hero. that they are noble, brave, honourable gentlemen who makes their partners giddy with pride and ooey gooey rushes of love.

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I’m worried because, dear readers this kind of stuff makes me feel sick.

I can’t stand it. It makes me cringe. it makes me reflexively curl my toes up and, sometimes do a fake gag thing and pretend to stick my fingers down my throat.

It’s too much. It’s too corny. It’s too cheesy. It smacks of a fakeness to me that, if I subscribed to it, would be doing my relationship with Popeye a great disservice. Maybe it helps other WAGs get through a deployment, I dunno. It winds me up. I like to remember the real man.

The one who makes me a cup of tea without asking if I want one, the one who always likes to listen to songs that remind him of when we were dating when we go on long car journeys (and sing along at the top of our voices), the one who teases me and always makes a geeky goofy face at me when I talk about my blog, the one who loves his job and hates his job in equal measure.

He is a hero, he has done heroic acts. He has been to war and seen live combat. He was trained for this, I respect him for this but I respect him for everything else he has done too. I respect that he gives money to the homeless, that he opens doors for me, that he loves his mum, that he has strong values and that he actively engages in discussion about how we raise our daughter.

If I jumped aboard the “my hero” train it would be like loving a ghost, or a dream, not Popeye. We argue and nag and have annoying habits that drive each other crazy. We have a real marriage. It takes work. It takes commitment. It takes strength. And it takes 50/50 effort. Building up Popeye into some mythical hero figure skews that balance and implies he is a wonderous god and I am his slavish worshiper. That’s just not how we roll, sorry.

The “my hero” attitude also yanks my feminist chain too, to some extent. It makes me feel that our sailors or soldiers, or (crap! What do you call RAF people?!? Is it pilots! No they can’t all be pilots, surely? *EDIT* it’s airmen! Of course it is! -thanks Jo!-wait, shouldn’t that be “air person”?)
…..or Airmen…..are viewed as swooping in to save us weak and possibly hysterical WAGs who have only just survived a nervous breakdown during a deployment.

…………

I do not need saving.

I do not need saving, and whilst, yes, deployments and moving and hell, the entire navy/military wife thing is reach-for-the-wine-and-dairy-milk hard, it is not going to kill me. It is not going to break me. It won’t. And Popeye coming home is not going to magically fix all the stress in my life either. He is not Superman, even though he is a super man.

And the final thing that gets my goat is that I have other stuff going on. My life does not revolve around Popeyes job. If the roles were reversed, just imagine how strange it would be for him to be posting stuff on Facebook all about my job! How I’m freakin awesome for carrying out my job role. How I’m so good/brave/humble/awesome/totes amazeballs for doing what my contract specifies I do. Aside from it being a huge ego trip it would also be bloody funny.

I’m not saying service persons going into combat situations or natural disasters aren’t brave. They are incredibly brave. I don’t think I would have the steel to do it. I am saying that they are all real people, with faults, idiosyncrasies and morning breath. They can be brave and honourable and still be irritating and sometimes a dickhead. Trust me.

Am I a total cowbag for feeling this way? Is it wrong that all the soppiness makes me squirm uncomfortably? Is it a British thing? I really don’t know.

What I do know is that Popeye is one hell of a man, and I love him and I’m proud of him, warts an all. The fact that he is a sailor is a bonus.

The hype of Skype.

~ oliveoylnavywife ~ Leave a comment

Ahh Skype! I heard so many wonderous tales from other navy wives about you. How seeing their Sailor was amazing. And I have suffered the aghast looks and “oh Olive you haven’t ever Skyped? How do you cope? Why not? you simply must! it’s the best!”

So this deployment, mostly so Popeye could see his Daughter, Sweet Pea, (who is turning into a right chunker by the way, SO cuuuuuute!) we attempted to get with the decade and Skype.

so, being the super modern Royal Navy couple that we are, we downloaded, (during paternity leave), we practised, then when he was back on deployment and alongside, we text each other, to arrange a time, Popeye scouted bars in Dubai with free wifi (a real chore I’m sure!) to find a place to do it.

I actually made sure I had makeup on! My top only had one bit of sick on it! I had tidied the living room! I had brushed my hair! Sweet Pea was wearing her best baby outfit! The clock ticked to the allotted time, adrenaline and excitement coursing in my veins, after two months we get to see each other!!!!

Aaaaaaaaaand…….nothing. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch.

Cue desperate texts costing a squillion pounds each- “I’m doing everything right here Popeye, it must be you, at your end”.

“No Olive, it’s not my end, it must be you”

“No Popeye, I must disagree, darling, surely it is you who is technologically challenged, not I”.

“Nope it’s you, I can’t be bothered now”.

“For God sake Popeye keep trying or I will LOSE it. It has taken me HOURS to get ready for this flipping Skype call!!!!”

Eventually… it connects.

Relief and anticipation flood my body as I peer into the iPad screen.

And I can see him! But wait…he’s pixilated like some Mine Craft character!

And his movements are all lagged and robotic.

Aaaaaand I can only hear every other word.

Oh.

Is this what everyone’s been raving about?

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After about fifteen minutes of Minecraft Robo Hubby making vowel sounds like a monkey, and me shouting “I can’t hear you, what?” Whilst trying to hold the (now screaming) baby up for him to look at, I am actually relieved when the connection cuts out for the last time and we go back to old fashioned texting.

After all that effort I am exhausted, Sweet Pea is freaking out about everything and Popeye is pissed off at the whole exercise.

Skype I’m sure is amazing when you’ve got a stellar connection and angel child and all the time in the world. However when one half of the conversation is either broken and disjointed, or has the background noise of the Queen Vic, it’s not the magical wonderous experience I was expecting!!!

The H word

~ oliveoylnavywife ~ 9 Comments

Homecoming. That date written in your diary then crossed out and written again a few days later because it got put back at some point over the last six or seven months.

Homecoming. The one day of your year where you experience ALL The emotional states known to mankind within a 24 hours period.

Homecoming, where you don’t know if your going to throw up, cry, shit yourself or have some weird pseudo orgasm.

Yep, it’s a tricky day alright. But I’d argue that for me, at least, homecoming starts about 2 days before I’m standing dockside listening to that bloody brass band.

H Minus 48 hours.

I am buffed, waxed, trimmed, polished to within an inch of my life, upon completion of this almost ritualistic Navy Wife MOT I return home feeling, sexy, glamorous and fresh. A little bit like Beyoncé crossed with Mary Poppins.

Sitting down on the sofa I nervously check my emails, again, and again. (No, none from Popeye in the last five minutes Olive!)Time to put another squeaky, high pitched, excited Facebook status up!

That done, a strange bubbling feeling begins to fizzle in my middle, my foot starts twitching, I jump up, walk to the kitchen and notice some washing up on the side. (At this point it has become a tradition in the Oyl household for me to listen to this song on repeat, very loudly.)

The cleaning binge begins.

Washing up leads to cleaning the sink, leads to cleaning the kitchen, leads to mopping the floor, leads to hoovering downstairs, which goes onto hoovering upstairs, that leads to dusting upstairs (the whole time my heart is thumping with adrenaline and I’m so wired I go to the loo for a wee like a zillion times).

After dusting, with sweat dripping down my freshly exfoliated face, things start to get really weird. These are all true things I have done two days before The Big H.

Cleaned ALL the windows. Inside and out.

De frosted the freezer, then cleaned the kitchen again because I’ve got melted ice water everywhere.

Washed, dried, and styled the dog.

Re cleaned the whole house as it smells of wet dog.

Pulled out the cooker (dangerous) and cleaned underneath and behind it.

Tidied the inside of all the cupboards in the house.

And finally:

Arranged all the DVDs alphabetically and by genre.

Seriously.

By now it is about 3am and my neighbours are about to complain. So I usually go to bed, cursing my now ruined manicure, blocked pores and bruised knees and wondering how long a burn from bleach takes to heal and can I cover it up with Max Factor…

H minus 24 hours. (think the Jack Bower countdown noise on 24, the TV show, click here!).

It’s time to get practical, I fill the car with petrol, check the tyre pressure, and start to tell everyone I see that Popeye is coming home.

Everyone.

My neighbours, the petrol station man, the check out girl, anyone I see on the dog walk, birds in the trees, inanimate objects…

At some point I do the all important food shop, buying Popeye a new toothbrush fills me with a level of excitement that is hard to contain. I buy all his favourite things and a bottle of champagne too.

I’m just too excited! When I get home, I pace, I jiggle, I tidy and re-tidy.

I get out my “homecoming outfit” and lay it out on the bed, I try it on, I freak out that it looks awful. I try on something else, freak out about that. Try on original outfit and get deodorant marks on it. Burst into tears and call my sister who calms me down and tells me to take off the clothes, put on the pyjamas and get some sleep. Sleep? Pah! The idea of sleeping verges on the ridiculous, as I verge on hysterical. I get maybe two hours then I am AWAKE!

And……

ITS HERE ITS HERE HOMECOMING IS HERE!

I get to see my husband again! All those months of tears and head tilts and parcels and lonely evenings in and weddings alone and emails and phone calls has come down to this day.

No pressure then!

I am out of the house at the crack of dawn, yet still always manage to get to the dock dangerously close to when the ship gets back. I have no idea where this time goes, but go it does.

Then the brass band starts playing, I find this particularly annoying, don’t ask me why but I feel it makes what is quite a personal moment feel like a parade.

When I see the ship, I get dizzy. My love for the much under appreciated tug boat must be noted now, because for all of the might of a warship, they still rely on the little tug boat to bring them safely home. I’ve always said to Popeye, if I was a ship I’d be a tug boat, small, chunky and sturdy, built to last and 100% dependable.

The ship comes alongside, and there they are! Gorgeous sailors standing in line, no matter what the weather. Then the search begins. Can you spot your sailor? For some reason if another wife finds Popeye first I get annoyed, so I scan frantically.

As a side note, at my first homecoming, after spending 6 months worrying whether I’d recognise Popeye, whether he would still fancy me, and whether he would get off the ship, look me up and down and go “erm, no thanks” and turn tail, I had decided, in my MOT wisdom, to not wear my glasses to homecoming.

Dear readers, I could not find Popeye on deck. Not only could I not find Popeye, but I started waving at a sailor I had guessed was Popeye, but in fact, was not. All the time Popeye can see me, frantically waving at the wrong sailor.

In summary, if you can wear your glasses. Or do as I did and invest in contacts.

Anyway….

You spot them! Then they disappear as they start to come down the gangway.

There they are.

And that’s it. That’s the moment. They are right there in front of you, and then they’re in your arms and you kiss. And time stands still, the world melts away and you drift away from your own body. Your spirit sings.

You’ve done it, they are there. Really there.

Home.

Muchos love,

Olive
X

Navy wife word porn

~ oliveoylnavywife ~ Leave a comment

There are a few short phrases that will leave any military spouse weak at the knees, salivating, crouched ready to spring and jump her sailor.

We are a straight forward lot, our needs are simple, and our feelings strong.

Sailors! Take heed! Listen up! Just spout these phrases and your wife will become putty in your hand….

(*Please read this using the voice of the M&S advert lady for full effect.*)

“Comms are up, promise I’ll call later today”.

I’ve got that funny feeling in my tummy!

“I’ve taken Friday off”

Oh yeah! Hubba hubba.

“Weekend duty was cancelled”

Cue Marvin Gaye.

“I’m definitely home for Christmas/your birthday/our anniversary”

Eeeeeek!!! Having to hold myself back here!

“Deployment date is postponed”.

Move over Christian Grey. Popeye is 50 shades of battleship grey sexier than you right now.

“I’ll be coming home early, I’ve got advanced leave”.

It’s like I can hear my clothes saying “the floor! The floor! We should be on the flooooooor!!!”

And then the best, sexiest, most leg shaking, bits tingling words of all…

“Homecoming date has been brought forward”

Holy shit Popeye!

What can I say…you had me at homecoming.

Xxxx

  

Brain farts

~ oliveoylnavywife ~ Leave a comment

They say it’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind. That being said, it must also be a woman’s prerogative to drive herself loopy with contradictions.

Some of these brain farts I have already covered in other posts, such as when I don’t want Popeye anywhere near me, yet cling to his tear stained t-shirt like a limpet crossed with a banshee (see “why doesn’t he just go already”). Others include hating time with a passion, then loving time equally as much, all depending on one key factor, is he home or not .

All the time my brain is behaving in this contradictory manner, I am doing my own head in. I don’t understand why I am so backwards and mental and generally slightly unhinged. Moreover I don’t understand how or why Popeye copes with it. I don’t know if it’s happened since I became a navy wife, or is a consequence of being one. I.e do you have to be mad to love a sailor, or does marrying a sailor make you mad?

This debate goes round and round in my head many times during a deployment. I think it when I start to cry over finding a snotty tissue he’s left in his jeans pocket, I think it when I start laughing manically after I’ve packed away all the Xbox crap very important game paraphernalia. I think it when I find myself scowling at happy couples in the street, and I think it when I have a full on adrenaline rush when the phone starts ringing.

But the time when I seriously begin to doubt my sanity is when I have just received the holy grail of contact (as a couple we still have not mastered Skype, I know, I know, how do we cope etc). I’m talking about the much awaited, much anticipated phone call.

So you all know my response to the ringing phone, and my mad phone ninja skills. What I haven’t covered is the completely irrational response I have after ending the call.

This response has no bearing on the quality of the call, it can be long, short, detailed, sober, drunk, end with “I love yous” or end with being cut off. The point is, dear readers, is that there are many many times when after the phone call I have catapulted into complete and utter despair. Like, total meltdown depressed, crying, hugging the bemused dog who tries in vain to escape, eating a whole tub of Ben and Jerrys, despair.

A navy wife friend said to me that this is the reason she prefers emails, because at least then you can plan what to say, be excited to receive the next message, and revisit the conversation, I must say I’m beginning to agree with her, she writes a good blog, you can find a link to it here actually.

I have no real reason as to why the odd call makes me feel so crap. I have many theories, ranging from me being hormonal, to jealous that he is having fun without me, to possibly me simply not being a normal person.

Usually, for other people, wives and girlfriends, when their partner or loved one does something or gives them something that they have wanted for a long time, the response is happiness, gratitude and love.

Not for me! I get pissed off! And sad! And annoyed! And I wish he just hadn’t even bothered ringing because now I have to watch the second half of Downton Abbey feeling annoyed at Mrs Bates, because even if Mr Bates is in prison, at least she gets to bloody see him!!!

I can’t even finish this post with a heart warming summary, or an insightful commentary. Because I literally have no idea why I react like this after some phone calls. There’s no pattern, no way to predict it.

Stupid brain farts.

“Subject to change”: a massive understatement brought to you by the Royal Navy.

~ oliveoylnavywife ~ 2 Comments

The thing about the navy is, that until you are in a relationship with a sailor, you have this rosy tinted view of the “might of the British navy”. This super powerful, super organised sleek beast, epitomising the pinnacle of military might in the first world.

When you’re about five minutes in to said relationship with sailor, this view begins to lose its lustre. I am a bit of control freak at times granted, but that does not begin to explain my frustration with the oldest established military force in the U.K.

You can’t organise one thing, not one teeny tiny eeny weeny event or anything and safely bank that your partner will be there. Popeyes catchphrase at the end of any conversation about leave or deployment dates is “subject to change”.

“Subject to change” is putting it bloody mildly. When we were first dating I dropped a young fresh faced Popeye off at the train station on Sunday night. We had our standard hug and kiss goodbye and I drove merrily home to tidy up dirty cups, snotty tissues and sweet/choc wrappers left as what I can only guess are love mementos by Popeye, (which I have been reliably informed are an alpha males calling card by the way, so there), thinking in my wide eyed final year uni student way that “yes, I will of course see him on Friday. As per usual. That’s what he told me so that is what must be happening.”

I did not see Popeye for two months dear readers.

It wasn’t even a deployment, just basic sea trials (translation: pissing about on the sea whilst the engine breaks again and again) and bad timings of him being duty weekend in between.

This baptism of fire was about four years ago, before a deployment proper. It taught me a hard but necessary lesson.

Subject to change= “don’t rely on anything darling sailor is saying about where he is going to be at any given time on this planet until he is physically standing in front of you in the doorway with his x box in one bag and dirty kit in the other”.

This also happens with deployments, I’ve known countless other wives and girlfriends who have saved up all their pennies, adjusted their countdowns on the calendar and bought a whole new wardrobe so they can fly out and see their partners mid deployment. This does sometimes work and must be amazing to do. Alas, there are times when the ships timetable has changed, or their partners are duty or the some other international incident has occurred which means that all their build up and excitement comes crashing down.

These are “big” examples. There have been hundreds of times when leave has been cancelled, or he’s come home really late, or not come home at all and not been able to call until the next day (visualise me having a panic on a Friday, pacing around the living room and thinking, “is he really not coming home? I need to know so I can open some wine or not, will I be needed for lifts from the train station? Oh sod it he’ll have to get a taxi”.)

Just yesterday (and probably the inspiration for this cheerful little post!) I said goodbye thinking I’d see Popeye after he’d finished work, nope. Not a chance naive Olive! Gone until further notice! Don’t even know where he is! I’ve learnt to go with the flow now though and admit defeat. My timetable and plans MUST come second to the navy . I knew this when I met him.

Doesn’t mean I can’t moan about it though.

NONE of this is the sailors fault. No way. It seems to me that yes, the navy IS powerful. And it IS a world leader in protecting humanitarian rights and providing aid. What it is not, however,is all that organised in terms of sticking to the plan... Which I think is the part that annoys me (and other partners of sailors) the most.

This flexibility in the plan may be an essential component in keeping the Royal Navy up there as one of the “big boys”, or (and I suspect this is true) it may be due to the dubious attention to detail or rigorous testing provided by BAE so that half of what they need to do they can’t because the thing they need to use to get there is broken. Or they get to where they need to go and the thing they need to fire or check or use is broken. Therefore a wasted journey for the ship and missed Christmas plays, birthdays and anniversaries for the crew.

But I have to mention the flip side. Those fantastic spine tingling, breath taking evenings when you’re watching some highly intelligent documentary on TV (ok ok so it’s more likeI’m a celeb, X factor or true blood but he doesn’t need to know that, as you quickly switch to question time or something with Micheal Palin in it).

The door knocks, the dog starts going mental, you jump up, half daring to think it could be him, half hoping its a free dominos pizza and not a murderer. And there he is! Exhausted, dishevelled and grumpy, but home. These surprises are what makes up for all the crappy times when the Royal Navy messes us around. In these moments I freakin love the Navy. Like properly. Forever. Until the next Sunday night.

So my message to you the next generation of fresh faced, intelligent navy partners, is this: use the dates your Popeye gives you as a vague indication of when you might see them. Get holiday insurance. Do what you were planning on doing anyway. Don’t spend your life waiting for the navy to care about your plans and agenda because it’s got bigger things to prioritise. Understand that your sailor finds this JUST as rubbish as you and prepare to be amazed at how much of a warship can be repaired using gaffer tape.

Oh yes and make sure you shave your armpits for those surprise hugs in the doorway.

Muchos love

Xxxx

“It’s complicated” -my relationship with time.

~ oliveoylnavywife ~ 8 Comments

I think I’m in an abusive relationship. Not with hubster Popeye, don’t worry, he’s a kitten, but with time. Let me explain this analogy, ahem: Time, it treats me badly again and again, reduces me to tears and g&t’s and yet I always go back to it when it promises me it will never treat me like that again and how much it wants to make me happy.

See? Time+navy+me=abusive relationship! Or at the very least some kind of unhealthy codependent relationship based on love/hate.

When you are doing a deployment countdown you view time as your mortal enemy, and I, at least, spend a large chunk of each day taking it down a peg or two mentally (hang on maybe I’m the abusive one…). I spend a RIDICULOUS amount of time thinking about time (ironic) and how months and weeks are really not all that long. In short, when Popeye is deployed I demean time, I shorten it and patronise it, I beat it into submission until its not too scary.

For example, two months sounds scary, eight weeks, not so much. Also to say he’s still away for two and half months is awful, but if I take time by the gonads and twist, two and a half months magically turns into ten weeks! Tah dah!

You can also do this not just with months and weeks, but also with days. *gets magic wand and magicians hat*. Firstly, this works best when you’re in the ten week countdown. It also works best when you are alone in the house, holding a giant bar of dairy milk, standing in front of your calendar. No one knows why this is, its just physics or something.

Basically you don’t count the day they are coming back, nor do you count the day you are currently on. This means you can easily, at any point, shave two days off of your countdown as and when needed. Viola! Take that countdown! Here’s some more time magic…

You don’t count the day they are back, because omgomgomgtheyarebacktodayimawakeat3amandIwenttobedat2.45.

You can also not count maybe two or three days before they are home because omgomgimsoexcitedandihavetocleanthehouseandwashthedogandthecarandmyselfanddefuzzandbuyfivenewoutfitsandemergencydiet.

Not enough? You can also cut off any days you are meeting up with friends or staying at other peoples houses, or hotels, because then you won’t miss your sailor as much when you go to bed if you are tired and tipsy and also (as every navy wife knows) time passes quicker when you’re busy.

At the beginning of a deployment round up how much time you have done to give yourself an ego and moral boost. So if they’ve been gone for ten days, that turns into a fortnight, which you mentally say as “half a month”. And then abracadabra-10 days = half a month! Which sounds a hell of a lot better than telling yourself “they’ve only been gone a week and a bit”.

A month consists, always, of four weeks, not five, no matter what the calendar (or the bank) says. This way you can say “one month down, five/six/seven to go!” sooner and feel smugger faster. (I know “smugger” is not a word, but I am employing word magic here as well as time magic so there). You can then use this feeling of amazingness to combat the ‘I don’t know how you do it’ well meaning people’s looks with an “aha but I have already almost,kind of, I’m getting there, DONE it biatches!”

Aaand the best thing is, this feeling of wowzers look at me surviving and time passing aren’t I brilliant only gets better as more time passes!

I suggest you continue lengthen time in this way so that you feel freakin awesome until you reach the halfway point when you can start to shorten time again because, hey you’ve done half a deployment now chick and you are feelin pretty fly.

So that’s one side of my relationship with time, the other side is the side when Popeye is home on leave. Suddenly the very fabric of time changes! Three weeks, which was a very short and laughable amount of nothing-time during deployment is now a beautifully long vast insurmountable amount of time that will last forever. Three weeks becomes an eternity that you refuse to see the end of.

That is until time tricks you once again. Because no matter how 100% sure you are that three weeks is, in fact, forever and ever, no matter how much stuff you plan to cram into those weeks, you will wake up one day, usually for me around about day 17-18 and go “oh crap we haven’t done anything apart from stay in bed,walk the dog, watch walking dead and eat subway for two and a half weeks! How did this happen???”

Answer: Time has tricked me, once again.

And so it starts again, the feeling of super-duper-time-on-steroids whizzing past us both, heading terminally towards him going back to that bloody ship again to spirit him away for odd weeks here and there until the next deployment.

It makes me feel like Wiley coyote and the “meep meep” bird. It really does.

One of our strengths is, as navy wives and girlfriends, we can weave a mysterious magic with time. But, as Spider-Man taught me, with great power comes great responsibility. And time will come back around and bite you on the bum the second you start to relax your attention to it.

My advice, never take your eyes off it, it’s a tricky, sneaky thing, which is simultaneously my best friend and my greatest enemy.

Muchos love,

Olive Oyl
Xxxx

Navy wife MOT

~ oliveoylnavywife ~ 10 Comments

Now I’m not saying I let myself go during a deployment, but I do “relax” into what can only be described as a asexual state.

Because navy wives are a strange hybrid during deployments, we’re not single we are “taken” in the sense that we have got a partner, but they are just not here at the minute. When I do go out, dont get me wrong, I like to look good and feel good. I’m not paired up in the traditional marriage sense, but I AM spoken for. I dont flirt nor do I want to, but you dont fit into the “single” category, nor do I feel that I can 100% fit in with the married gals I’m out with either.

I still feel single in the sense that I have only got me to depend on, there’s no lift home from hubby, no one to swap stories with when I come stumbling in, he’s not there for me to catch his eye in the universal sign of “help! weirdo alert” when some creepy guy at the bar starts chatting to me. I have to pay the whole taxi fare. There’s no one to hold my hair back etc.

To compensate for the strange dynamic of being in a relationship, yet for all intents, purposes and for practical reasons, hoofing it alone, when they’re away you can totally get away with things that you can’t when they’re home.

I don’t shave my legs when hubby is gone, unless it is a very special occasion or Im getting worried the hairs have started to stick through my leggings and the static may cause a spark at the petrol station.

I do shave my armpits, but not with the finesse or attention to detail that arises when Popeye is home or it is summer. I have been known to wear a t shirt in lieu of a vest top because of my relaxed attitude to underarm fuzz during deployment.

I let my eyebrows have a race to the centre of my forehead (not really, but they do get quite bad at points).

Skin care routine? What skin care routine? (Unless you count leaving makeup on overnight and using shower gel to get it off the next day).

Of course hubby never knows about this, when on the phone I can pretend that I’m up and am having an oh-so-productive day when really I have spent two hours playing candy crush and looking at cats doing stupid things on YouTube, I’m still in my dressing gown and the dog has buried a chew toy under the duvet next to me. In the same vein if we ever Skype I will make sure my face and upper body look great, in some stylish top, and he will never know that my bottom half is wearing primark pyjamas with jams stains on them.

I only send him the pictures of me that I like, so I get to filter out all those that make me look a tad bizarre. It’s not a lie as such, more like giving Popeye a more favourable angle to miss when he’s away.

“Ah hah! clever me!” I think. “It’s the perfect ruse! I can totally relax my already fairly lax beauty regime and he will never know! Am a genius, this way he is still in love with me and I don’t have to worry about trivial things like haircuts or nice nails! nice one Olive, you’re doing swell girl.”

This state of happy self contentment/blissful unawareness continues until…

“Oh CRAP. It’s three weeks till he’s home! Three weeks! how did this happen?
Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod”.

When you’ve stopped staring blankly at the calendar agog that the time has actually past you come to the scary realisation that, he’s really coming home AND (no matter how many times you speed change, turn off the light and dive bomb under the covers) he’s going to have to see you naked at some point. SHIT.

And I’ve just realised my mother in law reads this blog. Hi…*waves*…

Anyway…

Once the initial surge of panic fades, you make the navy wife MOT list:

1. Haircut
2. Stop biting nails then get manicure.
3. Sort out feet.
4. Shave legs (if I start now I should be finished by the time he’s home)
5. Wax everything.
6. Exfoliate six months of dead skin cells off of your body.
7. Put a face mask on, maybe play some Enya or other plinky plonky music, to try and convince yourself this is pampering and relaxing, and not at all stressful or painful.

(Oh yes and the house list:
1. Clean the crap out of everything in a style of nervous desperation because you can’t sit still until the house is gleaming and you’re scared to move anything anywhere.)

I’ve suggested at my local salon that they should have a package called the Navy Wife MOT and include a haircut, bikini wax and eyebrow shape in it. I think they though I was joking but I was totally serious! All my navy wife friends do this, or a variation of this, depending (in my case) just how bad they’ve let themselves get during the deployment. Some girls probably look like they’ve bathed in milk and honey and had their makeup licked on by kittens every day (like my personal self image nemesis at 6.30am in the morning, – Charlotte from Sky News no one should look that good at that time of the morning, it’s unnatural and unrealistic and makes me want to cry into my bowl of Special K red berries).

Sorry, got carried away.

I am not one of those girls. I forget to take my makeup off at night, and wake up looking like ive been punched in both eyes (sexy), I would rather have an extra five minutes snooze than spend ages on my makeup in the morning, I frequently button up my cardigans (see, I wear cardigans!) the wrong way and don’t notice, all day. And I have gone out SO many times with not just wet hair, but wet hair with conditioner still completely in it, for that “barely dry, yet totally greasy” look.

The annoying thing is that this homecoming level of personal preening lasts for about a month after Popeye is home, after that I relax again, not quite to deployment level, but not as OCD as when MOT time comes around. That’s because it’s just not me. I mean, I’m clean and I make sure I’m de-fuzzed, but I don’t let it take over my life. My skin may not have been treated to a facial, my eyebrows may have just left the starting blocks, but an MOT level beautification isn’t needed, as lame as it sounds I feel confident just being myself.

A navy wife MOT is that extra reassurance when I feel what (I hope) are quite natural homecoming body image insecurities. Realising that hey I’m not asexual, I’m a woman, an ok looking woman at that, and he loves me. Sometimes it just takes a little extra scrubbing to make me realise that I could show up wearing a bin bag and Popeyes eyes would still light up like its Christmas.

Socialising and trying not to be mental.

~ oliveoylnavywife ~ 4 Comments

I think being a navy wife has made me slightly unbalanced. Please feel free to judge me, because I feel quite guilty about it, even though I am actively trying to remain stable and rational.

Especially when I compare me, in my time-greedy-navy-wife marriage to “everyone else” and their civvy-wholesome-sensible relationships.

Let me explain a bit,

Popeye is generally away for six/seven months, then home for about 3 out of 4 weekends a month the rest of the year, bar lovely lovely leave. So suffice to say, our time together is precious. (This time of course does not include time apart for effing BOST, Super-Annoying-Promotion courses of Stress And Grumpiness, or SAPSAGs for short or any other ridiculous and possibly pointless jaunts around the home waters).

(As a side note I once calculated the actual number of days per year we would spend together, including summer and Easter leave. All I can say is DONT DO IT. Deployment Maths is evil and led to me having a massive cry and freaking out about how we were ever going to make this marriage work. Not a good idea mid deployment, or anytime for that matter.)

Without fail on those precious Fridays he can actually come home ( crazy idea I know) at approximately 4pm our world is paused and our metaphorical drawbridge goes up.

We hole up in our house and because a)he’s a chef b) I don’t want to leave his side for more than 10mins to shower/pee, we order takeaway and totally veg out. Then we spend the remainder of the weekend hiding from friends and relatives and generally being lazy, spending money we don’t have and eating out, a lot.

We do venture out from time to time and actually see other people, and when we do I have to remind myself to share. Share my husbands company that is.

I restrain myself from standing on the edge of the circle of guys talking about football and cars and simply strain my ears trying to eavesdrop from the girls circle, only vaguely listening to our conversation, and replying with vague “mmm hmm’s”, “yeah I know” and “no way”‘s as appropriate. This has back fired on me several times when I’ve said something like “yeah I know” to someone’s horrible bad/ serious news like their dog died or they’ve lost their job or they think they might be gay. There are times when I gravitate over to where hubster is and laugh a split second too late at a joke I haven’t really heard. Awkward.

If someone dares to say that we should split up for a bit during a night out, i.e boys go to a different bar, girls will catch up later, I get a bit of a sicky feeling, and I start doing Deployment Maths (Deployment Maths is a bit like OCD, so when this happens on a night out with friends you can’t help but calculate that out of the 48 hours he’s home for, he will spend 16 sleeping/being hungover, 8-12 hours socialising, you will spend x hours going to/from said friends house therefore leaving you with approximately 5 hours together all weekend. And he’s not home for another month.)

I KNOW how totally clingy and mental this makes me sound, I’m a trained psychologist remember, however, I am at the merciless grip of Deployment Maths. My only defence is that in these cases I don’t let the panic get me. I smile, wave goodbye to Popeye and quickly order a double, hey if he’s getting those 16 hours, I might as well too.

Popeye copes much better at social gatherings such as the above than I do. He is chatty to everyone, to the point where he’s sharing stories from life on board that I haven’t even been told. It’s like finding out about this whole side of him he doesn’t think is all that relevant or interesting when he’s home and we are hiding with the home phone off the hook.

If your sailor, like mine, literally sends a variation of the same email every day week for 6 months, these escapades and anecdotes of daring do’s and hilarious scrapes from deployment can leave you feeling, well, quite surprised and then miffed to be honest. Popeye literally sends this email to me 80% of the time whilst deployed, ahem:

“hey baby, nothing much is going on here, same old stuff. I miss you loads and I can’t wait to see you, all my love, Popeye.”

Every email. For 6 months. Seriously.

This has led me to conclude that he either-forgets about these adventures on the high seas/around the globe, can’t be bothered to tell me, or doesn’t have time to email me the details. To this day, I still have no idea which of these theories is true. I’m leaning towards the former as its not so depressing.

So when my super-sonic-social-gathering hearing picks up on how he stole a giant fish from a bar in New York and they got pulled over by the police with said giant fish in the back of their car, or how his friend broke his collar bone trying to do a breakdancing move in Norway or whatever, I am just a tad peeved.

Is it wrong that I feel a pang of jealousy that Popeye doesn’t share these stories with me when we’re sitting at home watching tv and snuggling on the sofa? Or is it that he doesn’t feel they are important enough to waste our precious paradigm phonecall minutes on? I’m not one to disapprove, in fact I think it’s bloody hilarious the stuff him and his shipmates get up to, so that can’t be it. No, it’s more likely that when he’s home he, and I, mentally “shut off” the outside world, including navy dits, bills, report writing or visiting my grandparents.

When he phones home its for a bit of escapism from what generally is drudgery day to day on the ship. He wants to hear about what he misses, not relive another day apart, no matter how much fun he’s had. Rather wait until he’s been home, had some downtime with the drawbridge up, then go out and entertain. My husband the social butterfly who just wants to come home and forget all about work. Until he’s got an audience. Bless him.