The countdown is on - 17 days

It’s official: Wayne has accepted a job offer with the Canadian Forces as an Artillery Officer. He leaves for Basic Military Qualification (“BMQ,” more commonly known as Boot Camp) on August 30 and will be gone until Dec. 12 in Quebec. I hope he’ll be allowed home for Christmas. After BMQ, he has three more phases of training to complete in various areas of Canada before being commissioned into the Royal Regiment of Canadian Artillery, at which point he will be posted to one of the following cities, where I will follow (in order of preference):

Gagetown, NB;
Valcartier, QC;
Shilo, MB;
Edmonton, AB; or
Petawawa, ON.

You may notice that none of these options are in B.C., which means that in year’s time (or so), I’ll be leaving our home province to follow him to our posting. It is a decision we made together and in the best interest of our future as a couple and, eventually, as a family.

It’s nice, now, to be able to be myself at work – I hadn’t told anyone (since I’m still on probation, after all) and it felt as though I was leading a double life: the career-minded Meghan at work and the future-military-wife Meghan at home, with so much to think about in between. The poor girls in my section of the office must have thought I was a real loner, not saying much about my life and pretending I’m not on Facebook so they don’t look me up and see all the military groups I’ve joined. Haha. Now I can be honest abut what’s going on in my life and they won’t think I’m strange for being randomly emotional sometimes in the near future.

Anyway, as much as I don’t want Wayne to leave, I do want him to go, to “be the best he can be,” to learn and grow and take pride in his work. I’ve never met a more patriotic man than my husband, a man more dedicated to the preservation of his heritage. I admire this most about him . . . next, of course, to his impeccable taste in women (snort).