On Recruiting Duty: So Far

If you're at all familiar with Marine Corps recruiting duty...you've probably heard the horror stories. We certainly had!! As a few of you may know, this is something my husband has wanted to do for some time...after 4 deployments, he was ready for a break. So, he'd actually been trying to volunteer for awhile but it never went through...and then he was flagged! Go figure!! (Rumor has it, you have more say if you volunteer, rather this is true or not we'll never know...as it is, we got our #2 choice, which we had decided was a better choice after the fact anyway!)  But anyway, because it'd been in the works for awhile, we'd had a lot more time to get used to the idea of what was to come, but we also knew that the most important thing was to go in with a positive attitude and not let other people's negative experiences scare us or bring us down.

Now that we've been here a few months, I thought I'd share a bit about our personal experiences so far. To be entirely honest, parts of the stories are true. The hours are truly horrible, they weren't making that up. In fact, we're lucky to see my husband before 10 pm most nights...and he's not had a full weekend off in ages either! But, as I said before, we'd heard the horror stories and were prepared for this. Yes, in some ways it absolutely sucks, but considering the alternative...I'll take late nights over deployments any day! At least I know he'll be home safe every night, and that definitely counts for something. To be honest, one of the worst parts of the whole thing is trying to figure out meals!! It's extremely hard to cook family dinners when the hours are so crazy...I've been trying to use the crock pot a lot so it's ready whenever, but it's still definitely something we're trying to adapt to. If any of my lovely readers have tips about cooking for a super busy schedule (or any great crock pot recipes!), they would be greatly appreciated! For now we seem to alternate between waiting until he's home to cook (or eating out)...which is not a great option for me! Or cooking early, and reheating when he's home...the better alternative but still not ideal. I hope we will eventually figure out a system that works well for us, but for now, if this is my biggest complaint, I think we will survive recruiting duty just fine!