The Secret Keeper

As I mentioned previously, A has taken on being an ALPA (union) rep for his local base. It's a cool volunteer position that also affords him the opportunity to avoid the rumor mill and be one of the first to get the truth about what's going on with the company. It also keeps him updated on many of the misbehaviors of his coworkers that eventually need mediating.

The downside? He has to keep all this juicy info to himself. He had to sign a non-disclosure agreement and is prohibited from owning company stock. He has to be careful in his discussions to avoid any whiff of insider trading. Now, this is HARD for A. He's not the best at keeping surprises and secrets. At least from me. But he manages. The other downside? He gets calls and emails ALL the time. And he feels compelled to answer every incoming call as best he can. Even if it interrupts family time or we are all in the van waiting for him. I think because he's been at home on leave for basically his entire term so far he's a) trying to prove himself, and b) forgets that there will be times that he can't answer his phone- like when he's flying, and sometimes the caller will just have to wait. Its a work in progress to work this new role into our family life.

I'm now in my last week of maternity leave and will return to work next week. I'm looking forward to it because honestly my (just turned) two year old drives me nuts. He's constantly into stuff and it's exhausting to constantly follow him and clean up his messes all day. And then the seven year old comes home from school and they just rile each other up until bedtime. Since I knew I'd only be home for 12 weeks, all of it with A home with me, I never bothered to look into community activities to keep us occupied. Probably this would have helped my mental status... This week A is gone to Houston Monday through Friday at a big union meeting. No matter how much he denies it, I KNOW he is enjoying a quiet hotel room, a big bed to himself, and restaurant meals where he doesn't have to cut anyone else's food, play 100 games of tic-tac-toe, or remember to bring diapers, wipes and sippy cups. This is sort of my trial run in getting up and everyone out of the house in the morning and getting dinner and the evening chores done alone. It's a little easier since I'm home all day, but it's good practice. A will remain on leave for a few more weeks- thanks to a combo of vacation time and generous paternity leave he is actually off longer than I am. He heads back to recurrent training for the second half of November and then has vacation again in December for Christmas. At least there is a lot of "easing in" into this three kids at home business!

Changing Connections

I mentioned previously that Facebook really opened up connections for pilot wives. 10 years ago there was one primary forum, Jetgirls, and a few other smaller ones. One had to specifically seek them out and unless you were familiar with the concept of a forum, you probably didn’t search for one. I stumbled on Jetgirls after finding its brother site Jetcareers. We were all a happy family, getting to know each other virtually, sharing our ups, downs, and questions. It was a smallish community where you started to know people through their posts and replies. With the rise of social media in our lives Facebook has taken over as the connector of choice. There are Facebook groups for everything now days and options for secret and limited memberships as well as open to anyone. Now, there are tons of ways for pilot wives to connect via groups. There are several general groups and many niche groups- airline specific, family, political, cooking, reading. Don’t like a member of a group or want to discuss something specific? Start your own group. No need for a website, forum software or anything else. The groups have become a great resource in connecting with others and sharing information. Some groups have become overwhelmingly large and generalized at this point which definitely means a loss of a small community where people get to know each other personally. I went on vacation and visited ladies I met in the Jetgirls forums but I have yet to make a new friend via a Facebook group. Facebook can be great if you want 500 opinions on when to call a union rep or commiserate how difficult life can be but who wants to air their laundry for that many people or run the risk of someone telling someone telling someone about something you posted and having it get back to your pilot or his company in a negative way? Facebook is not nearly the private entity people pretend it is. Also with newer groups there are a lot more random posts to weed through- questions about kitchen remodels, photos of snakes defeated, complaints about in laws... Hang around long enough and you will see the same questions and topics replayed over and over. Admittedly, topics don’t hang around in a Facebook feed long enough for newer people to know the topic has already been hashed out. Unless, you know, search function. Overall, it’s good the worlds gotten smaller and there are more connections out there to be made. It’s just finding the time to whittle down and actually make the connections.

Returning home

I wrote 328 posts over the course of nine years and then I hit a wall. A couple of years into regional carrier life and every thing was so routine that it just seemed like there was nothing to write about any more.

Since my last post, in March 2015, some things have changed, for better or worse, and some things have not, also for better or worse. I’m still working full time as a hospital social worker and continue to work with parents and babies in a NICU setting. A continues to fly for his regional airline with 10 years of service behind him. Our oldest son M, known as Kidzilla, is now 15 and in high school. He resides with his dad and stepmom on the west coast. Our middle son S, known as babyzilla, is soon approaching 7. Our youngest son C is 2 this month. And our new, sweet baby girl Peeps is 2 months old. Yes, we’ve added TWO more children since I last posted. Obviously, things are a bit hectic around the house at times. One of our saving graces is that A has bypassed upgrading to Captain several times in order to remain a senior First Officer. This has allowed him to bid schedules that work for our family and allow him to be gone home when we need him. There has been a significant impact on our finances from doing this though. A was pretty much forced to upgrade by his company due to mergers and will be going for training in the spring. He bid it out as far as possible to remain home for Christmas and Spring Break.

This past May I took my first flight in 7 years. It was the first flight for both S and C as well. We all flew to California on short notice due to the unexpected death of my father. We did spring for regular fare tickets because I couldn’t handle the stress of non-reving on top of everything else. Holding a 19 month old on top of a 28 week pregnant belly while two legging it across the country was no simple feat, but we did it. We had always put off visiting California because the logistics of traveling there and then to the rural area where my parents lived just seemed overwhelming (and expensive!), but we made it work. It was interesting to be there again after 7 years away. There was much to talk about and rediscover- the traffic!, our extended families!- and several new experiences for the boys- mountains! snow! Giant trees! At some point we will travel out there again to spread my fathers ashes in the park he loved.

A was voted in as FO union rep at his base much to his surprise. While walking around the grocery store one day in early spring, he got a call from the local (base) committee saying that his name had shown up as a write in on several ballots for FO rep but they didn’t have a willingness to serve form from him. Someone had staged a write in campaign to get him elected without his knowledge. He didn’t even know about it! His name went on the official ballot and he was elected without any kind of campaigning. Although it adds to his business and strains his barely existent time management skills, he does enjoy the position. And now that his airline is headed into merging and other future possible changes it helps cut down on all the rumors he brings home because he is the first to know the truth of what’s going on.

Hopefully I can start a new season of blogging, this time as an experienced wife. I have found that with the rise of Facebook there is a lot more one to one, immediate support and less following peoples lives long term via blogs. Most of the aviation wife bloggers I used to follow have dropped off of blogging and haven’t posted in years. A lot of blogs start and disappear after a few posts and there are very few long termers out there. It’s good to be back and hopefully I still have some followers out there.

In the clear

I haven't posted for a while due to the fact that I had news but didn't want to post about it lest it could come back and haunt us later. In a "you must have been distracted and caused this crash" kind of way. But now it's looking like the news is better than we expected and we can begin to breathe and move forward again. Back in February, A went for his yearly neck ultrasound to monitor his post cancer status. And he came home *knowing* something was wrong just by the way the tech did the scan. And sure enough, a few days later, we got the call from the endocrinologist that something wasn't right and further testing was required. So we braced ourselves for the worst- cancer recurrence, another year + on LTD, the works. A even started telling people he expected to go off work again. He got the secondary testing done last week, which was followed by a phone call from the MD of which he can't recount anything except "it" being moderate. But he didn't know what "it" was- a tumor? Risk of reoccurance? A second kind of cancer? He made an appointment for two weeks later to meet  with the MD. And so we were doomed to wait in this abyss of not knowing. Which I have no patience for. So I had A come down to the hospital where I work and we took a walk over to medical records and got the testing results and interpretation for ourselves. Which showed good news and no sign of anything. And then we could breathe again. And move forward with our lives. There will still be more to come, I'm sure, but it's funny how we immediately jumped to the worst conclusion. And it didn't even seem so bad. It's a known quantity and we are in a better off place now for support then we were several years ago. But still, nothing is better than something at this point.

Repeat cycle

Everybody who knows A or has been following my blog for a while knows that A is the epitome of Murphy's Law. If something bad is going to happen, it will happen to him. And anything that happens is of catastrophic proportions. Sometimes I wish I had known this before I had married him, but it's too late now.

A's had ankle pain flare ups as long as I've known him and they have greatly increased in frequency in the last few years. He was on a medication for gout that seemed to work but was costing us $80 per month. With insurance. We switched to the $5 per month medicine that doesn't work as well. Recently a was at the doctor and she ordered some autoimmune and other panels to see what else is going on. And true to form, A showed up with rheumatoid arthritis. Bam, now what? And true to form again, when A got the news, he texted it to me saying "the tests showed I have RA and none of the medications are FAA approved." Which left me breathless for a minute until I remembered A's tendency to both globalize and catastrocize (see here, curiously posted 5 years ago today) and I stepped back to do my own research. A has yet to see a specialist (waiting on the referral) but there do appear to be accepted meds. And there's a chance he tested positive but doesn't really have it; much like our celiac disease scare last year with Littleboyzilla. I posted our news on a few Facebook groups, looking for someone else who has been in our shoes. I didn't find anyone with direct experience, but did get lots of advice about and offers of green smoothies, essential oils, eating daily doses of raw veggies. What I really need to know is- how long is A going to be off work while we shepard this new issue through the FAA approval process. And what do I need to know going in to the specialist? Between the Short Term Disability, Long Term Disability and Loss of License plans, we are properly insured- but then what? That's the question we've been struggling with already- where would we go from here?
But for now, we're just taking it day by day, giving it over to God, and waiting for the next step to get here. Because that's all you can do when you are married to Murphy's law personified.