The (Not-So) Incredible Shrinking Woman

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Want to know how to shrink more than five feet in a mere instant? Get upset with your deployed husband for not getting back to you on an urgent matter only to find out a week later that your blasted email server hid some email from you. That's how!

When my husband is deployed, I leave him alone when it comes to certain decisions that need to be made, administrative issues, etc. Unless someone is dying or the house burned to the ground, I just don't see the need to bother him with things he can't do anything about, or hasn't got the time to focus on. I realize we're all different and some couples share everything during a deployment, but this method works well for us.

Last week, an urgent matter arose. I emailed my husband that nobody was dying, I didn't want to alarm him, but I needed to talk with him as soon as possible when he had the time.


If my husband calls, it's generally late at night, so I was basically asking him to call earlier if he could. As I said above, this is out of character for me, so I knew my husband would realize that it was important and would call if he could. He didn't call, but he didn't email either and I had to make a decision without his input. Not the end of the world, but I would have liked to bounce it off of him and hear what he had to say.

I became a little irritated and at bedtime I sent an email stating that I was irritated because I have never made a request like this before and the one time I did? No phone call. No email. I also stated that I would get over it by the time I woke up, but I had to get that off my chest. My husband isn't in Afghanistan participating in night raids so there was no fear that he left for a mission or something of that nature. Before I get chastised, I wanted to point that out. I wouldn't have been upset, or even requested to talk to him if he were on a combat deployment. He is in a safe environment. Phone correspondence is hit or miss but we'vetypically had great email communication during this deployment so my request wasn't outrageous.

Over the past couple of weeks, people have claimed to send email that I didn't receive and I began to think there was a problem. And there was. When I logged into the server (something I never do), sure enough, there sat 101 emails that the server thought I'd be better off without (he.will.pay) and didn't forward to my inbox. As I was reading the unread and unresponded-to email, I froze when I came across one that read, in part:

Been trying to get a signal, can't get through. Will try again tomorrow. Can you hold off until then?

My 5'6 frame shrank down to three inches in a nanosecond and I gotta tell you - the view is just not that good from way down here.

Gotta go - that pesky cat is heading my way. He keeps stepping on me.

OUCH........


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