The proud wife

As you can probably guess from my title, I'm an oil field wife. Unless you are one of us, you can not possibly fathom how hard it is to be one of us.

I am extremely proud of what my husband does for a living. His job is more dangerous than even he sometimes realizes, but he's grown to love what he does. As proud as I am of my husband and as happy as I am that he likes his job, it makes my heart hurt to say goodbye to him every other week. Most may say that a 7/7 hitch is the best you can get, but it's honestly one of the worst in my opinion. Only second to the 28/14 and 28/7 hitches.

The oil field is very gracious with their pay and there are endless job possibilities, which is Justin's favorite thing about the field. On his specific rig they have roustabouts, which are deck hands, then a C, B, A, and Lead operator. He started out as a Roustabout in January and by July his Lead had him in the process of moving up to a C operator. In August he did his 2 weeks of school and got a promotion and raise, a great thing at that time since it was just a month before I had Brantley. I do have to brag on him a little bit, in his training everyone is given the same test and you only have to pass certain parts based on your job, well my smart hubby passed the entire test, even the Leap operator portion. That being said, his ultimate goal is to become a Lead within the next 5 years. Generally moving from a roustabout to a C operator only takes a year but after that it gets a bit tougher and slower to move up.

As generous as the oil field is, there is no amount of money that can make my husbands time away from us better. Obviously not having to worry about if we can pay our bills make it easier, but saying goodbye and spending so much time apart is still extreamly hard on both of us and so much more now that we have Brantley. I do worry that Justin being gone so much will affect his and Brantley's relationship more so when he's a bit older than right now, though I know now is important too as he's finally starting to recognize people and all that. 

All in all it just sucks having my husband gone so much. I got to thinking about it and no matter how long we are together we'll never spend more than half of that time physically together. It makes me incredibly sad to think about this fact. One thing about his job that I rarely let myself think about is that his job in insanely dangerous, even deadly at times. When he walks out that door hitting the road to Louisiana every other Tuesday night, there is absolutely no guarantee that I will ever see him again. That's why every hug, kiss, phone call, and conversation is that much more important to me.

This post has been all over the place, but I've had a lot on my mind that I needed to get out.