Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Love

We've been married a little under two years. It has been like nothing I could ever imagine. Through I don't know what I envisioned marriage to be like, it is better that I could taken from any fairy tale with knights and princesses (those stories are just about lust anyhow).

Last night we went on a date to a local beach arcade. We played skee-ball ("Fun for the WHOLE family!") till our eyes crossed and driving games and shooting games. Them we went to the taffy store for freshly made saltwater taffy and ended with pizza on the beach watching the full moon rise over the Atlantic Ocean. I don't know if life gets any better than that. He wanted to take me on this date and show me this attention, not to right any wrong doing or to make up from a fight, just because he wanted to show me a good time. This is LOVE.

Sunday, August 26, 2007

He's Leaving

He's leaving. On Wednesday ( we think... you never know untill about 48 hours before the flight) my husband will fly back to his ship which we think (again, all things subject to change) will be in Trinidad. We have had a wonderful time while he's been home. It's summer in the Northeast so of course it's really busy; sun, sand and all the things that go along with it. Last weekend we spent three days traveling through Vermont and New Hampshire on the most wonderful and romamtic "getaway" anyone could imagine. I started a new job last Tuesday after recovering from a bout of food poisioning. Thank god he was home for that... I'm not sure how that would have gone if he wasn't around to help me get through that. The new job is going really well and I'm excited to ease into fall with a new routine.

He's been having a little trouble with his free time. It's difficult for most people, I think, to have a set amount of free time during which you must relax before the free time ends and work begins again. He's very good at staying busy, but to the point where (here we go with the wife nagging) some of the things that must get done are passed by. Fishing trips take precedence over changing the oil in the car, etc.

About three days ago I started thinking about him leaving. My moods began to swing a bit more toward the unhappy and my paticients began to slowly thin like a piece of bubble gum streached tight. Friends and family poking fun at me have been met with a stern glare and a snappy and defensve retort insead of the usualy friendly banter. He's leaving. He'll be gone for 28 days. It's time to put on my armour. No one else will be around the walk the dog, no one else to do the banking if I'm at work, no one to come home to at the end of the day. Things change, I will watch trashy television and eat popcorn for dinner instead of watching Discovery Channel and having a complete and well balanced meal. It's not bad really, I LOVE popcorn and trashy TV and I think everyone should be so lucky to have that sort of time to them selves. I think becoming a bit of a grouch is just a result of trying to deal with the impending transition.

This is the life we've chosen. It's not a bad life. Just a different one.

Friday, August 10, 2007

Early Morning Fishing

This morning we went fishing at 5am. The fishing part was his idea and my idea was to see the sunrise and be on the water in the early morning, which I hadn't done in a while. We brought mugs of steaming coffee, the dog, five fishing poles, and two tackle boxes. I'm not sure yet how I feel about fishing, but here is what I do know:
I like being on the water.
The sunrise was beautiful.
I like to eat fish.
We didn't catch any fish.
We never catch any fish, or if we do we throw them back...something about being too small.
I don't like to catch fish, and then not eat them, it does not make sense to me.
Perhaps in the future a more conclusive opinion about the act of fishing will develop, but for now it's sort of a gray area for me. My husband on the other hand has a strange attraction to fishing that I can't decipher. The thrill of the hunt? When I was a child, my dad and I would go hunting for rabbit. We usually caught one and we always ate it. It was delicious and it was the only meat we would eat, store bought meat rarely crossed our table. I understood hunting with my dad, it was exciting, and there was an end result you could eat. But this fishing obsession I am struggling with.

Anyhow, we motored about the Piscattaqua River, through the back channel, past the old Wentworth Hotel and back up the mouth of the river. I stopped casting after about an hour mumbling something about my arm hurting. Just as I was settling onto a cushioned seat with the dog and my coffee, I was asked to take the wheel and "just hold us here for a few minutes". Well a few minutes turned into 45 and then the constant barrage of directions on how to "just hold us here" made it seem even longer. So much for my coffee. A few sighs and eye rolls finally got me relieved of my helm duties and we headed out of the protected harbor and onto the ocean. The sun was above the horizon but behind clouds, still low in the sky and the colors of a new day were drawn out a few minutes longer. We sped up and rode through the swells, all annoyance of the past 45 minutes lost with the first deep breath of salt air. How many people have written about this exact feeling, the flushing of salt air as if cleansing every cell in your body. I don't need to concentrate on a deep yoga breath, the sweetness of the air forces me to drink it in slowly, turn my head into the wind and let each hair be resulted just slightly so as to create a tingling feeling on my scalp. Nose up slightly to catch even more of the wind in my nostrils, slow grin on my face and all the while watching the colors of the sky, listening to the sound of the water rushing by, smelling and tasting the sweet salt air and feeling cleansed like a first baptism. But this isn't the first time I've felt this, and it's far from the last. I will go early morning fishing anytime.

Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Chapter One: He's home

He surprised me three days early. It was a nice surprise, however I hadn't had time to clean the house and grocery shop and otherwise eliminate the evidence of my single girl life style. But none the less I was happy to see him.

This is my first blog. I am nervous. Who will read this? Will anyone read it? I think EB White had the right idea when he wrote this:

"The essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is of general interest. He is a fellow who thoroughly enjoys his work, just as people who take bird walks enjoy theirs. Each new excursion of the essayist, each new "attempt," differs from the last and takes him into new country. This delights him. Only a person who is congenitally self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays."

About me: I wear stained Carrharts, clear Mabeline Mascara, and Channel Lip Gloss. I am a graduate of a Maritime Academy in the Northeast. My husband "ships out" which means he goes to work on a boat for extended periods of time. I stay at home.

The intention of this blog is write about my unusual lifestyle for the entertainment and benefit of others, as well as to provide a creative outlet for my literary self. You will find many spelling errors and even more grammatical errors. I have my writers Harbrace on the desk and each mistake you point out I will gladly learn from.

Back to being a Seawife: He is away for 28 days at a time and home for 28 days. Now, I fully realize that this is NOTHING compared to what some seawives endure. Many in the Merchant Marine ship out for 4 to 6 months at a time. Furthermore, there are wives of those in the US Military who are gone for an unspecified amount of time with greater risk and probably less cash. ( I won't get into the war at this point, as I'm sure there are thousands of other blogs which cover that.)
However, our situation is still far from normal and as EB White so eloquently said above, I am certain everyone else is interested.
This is it, the first entry. Thank you for reading, tune in for the ride anytime.