Inevitable Issues during Deployment and TDY's

Our fish died today. I should have seen it coming, because my husband left for tdy (temporary duty) a few days ago. It seems like there is some sort of unspoken rule that when your spouse is gone on a tdy or a deployment there are certain things that are going to happen.

First, if your children own a fish, one of them will die. You, the left behind spouse, will get to deal with the crying and sadness. You get to deal with the clean up and all the explanations.

Speaking of explanations, it seems every time dad leaves my son asks a question about sex, puberty, drugs, or some sort of topic "dad" should have to answer. Instead it's me about a week after dad leaves.

Of course, your child's school will have a daddy/daughter dance right in the middle of deployment. This never fails. I swear my kid's school never even had these dances until my husband got deployed.

Also, all of your kids are going to get sick. My kids never get sick and now they are all coughing and congested. More than likely you will get sick to.

If you own your home there is going to be some sort of household problem as well. The first time my husband deployed the toilet broke and it took me about 4 hours of working on it and then eventually calling someone for help to fix it. This time one of the master bathroom sinks is leaking underneath the cabinet. I have no idea what to do about that, so it will just have to wait. Lucky for us we have two sinks, I'll just use the other one.

If you rent a house you might find out that your landlord hasn't paid their mortgage and the house is being foreclosed on and now you get to move houses with out your spouse there to help. You may think that's crazy, but I know multiple people in the military that this has happened to.

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