Further Decline as the Stereotypical Husband...

The folds on the letter were fresh.  I read out loud the final version of my letter of introduction to my future CO to my husband.  For those who don't know, we SWOs (at least) keep to a somewhat archaic tradition of sending letters of introduction (via snail mail!) to our future CO's.  They're pretty generic.  The good ones don't neccessarily stand out as much as the really terrible ones.  I had carefully drafted mine, trying to strike a balance between enthusiasm and professional, memorable not queer.  I had even gone to the trouble of having an instructor at SWOS review it, along with a post-command O-6 (Captain).  

In short, I thought it was a pretty damn good letter.

"'Niles and I have been married for seven years, and he may be ---'"

"Wait, Alyssa, did you say, 'seven'?"

"Yeah...  Seven."

(Semi-awkward pause as I do the math....)

"Crap!  Eight years!  We've been married eight years."

"You could just scratch it out and send it."

I half thought about one-lining it, initialing it, and then sending the letter in...  Like a PMS report.  Then I thought about not making any changes and just sending it in.  But then again, with my luck, it would come up in conversation during my Hail and Farewell...  The CO would then surmise that I have no attention to detail...  And then he would tank my fitness reports because obviously my laziness to print off a new letter to send him meant I would be too lazy to do anything worthwhile as the Chief Engineer.

But you know what?  It's easy to forget how many years you've been married if you overlook your anniversaries.