By Amy Nielsen

I GOT THE JOB! Yes, I am screaming! OHMYGOSHOHMYGOSHOHMYGOSH!

This is unexpected and out of the blue. This particular job is not just any job either. It is a logistical nightmare in the making – just the way us military spouses like it.

Within the next three weeks I have to go on a weeklong business trip, have several medical tests and procedures, sort out a nanny for my daughters, and figure out how to get a new pair of riding boots to match my kilts before August first.

Boots! In July! Are you kidding me!?

Now how does this new job, on the road for the next three months, fit in with my current newly started studies? Well, in a word, it doesn’t. At all. Except that knowledge never goes to waste and it is stuff I have wanted to know for a long time. If this gig goes south I still have my original pre job-bombshell career in the works.

As a military family, recently retired, we have a unique opportunity here to be in opposite positions for the first time ever. I will in essence be TDY CONUS for three months, while my husband gets the role of fulltime working spouse, AKA Murphy’s new best friend. It has been fascinating watching us pull together, in almost muscle memory precision, the slightly, rusty pre-deployment plan. In my career as a Navy spouse, I was a peer to peer spouse mentor for Navy life. I taught the pre-deployment cycle and the deployment cycle classes. I know how to make slick work of a short notice set of orders. Except this time I’m the one who is going.

So many people ask how it is that my husband is letting me pursue this job. He is clear to point out that he is doing all he can to make this happen for me. He understood going into our relationship that if, after he retired, I was ever given the chance to go return to my career that we would do everything we could to make it work.

He is exceptionally supportive and willing to step into the role of keeper of the homefront. To him it is a chance to see a side of life he has missed out on for the last 20 years of his career. He finally gets to be the primary parent. We pride ourselves on having a very equal relationship, but there is definitely a primary parent and a primary working spouse in our family. Since we homeschool, and will continue to do so while I am away, he will now step into a different role as parent and spouse.

Then they usually turn to me and ask if I know what it’s like living like that? I have plenty of experience on the road. This job is not a new endeavor for me. In fact, being a road warrior is an essential part of my career history. It is one of the things that made my relationship to the Navy and to my husband’s career much easier to deal with. While I was never a service member, I did spend many months at a time away from home with little to no communication, living in very tight quarters with a very small group of people, doing day in day out the same off the wall, never would use it in civilian life in a million years, expertise. I was a lighting designer and road technical manager for a national touring children’s theater production.

I have also spent 10 years and four, 12-month plus deployments with my husband’s Navy career. I understand he cannot possibly know exactly what the roller coaster before him looks like. Between exploding washing machines, flaming minivans, dying pets, vacations alone, and a few other sundry joyous experiences, I survived my visits with Murphy’s law and his sidekick Loki. At least my husband doesn’t have to give birth alone, twice.

Now we are working on a new childcare plan. This so far is turning out to be the hardest stumbling block. I have three weeks to find an appropriate nanny. We have several odd requirements for our nanny and while in an area with a large available pool, our particular situation is proving difficult to fill. The other difficulty is figuring out how much to pay for a rate since we live in the poorest county in our state, next to one of the richest and the rates vary as much as twenty dollars an hour. And let’s not even get started with nanny taxes.

I have a steep learning curve to make sure I get everything at home situated as much as possible so the transition will be as easy as possible. I know it will be rocky. I know it will be hard. I know we will be changed. My job is to make sure we are molded not shattered. I have such a special perspective on this situation. I am bringing all of my resources and talents to bear to make sure this job happens.