I believe I left off where I was at rock bottom. I can't leave everybody hanging. Rock bottom is an awful place to be.
Every little thing that could go wrong seems to have found a way to do just that. I couldn't sleep at night but was bleary, exhausted and out of it during the day. I couldn't take a break from boots so my feet could heal normally. I had fever and aches and utter misery was mine. I'd lost a bag with a few important items. My bed was hard and lumpy--there was no mattress cover. The sheets were thin and scratchy (polyester?).
During my one half-day the next day (the closest I'll come to a "day off" until I go home), I met our new project manager, TSgt Kevin Sargent, or "Sergeant Sargent." We just call him "Sarge." It's easier.
Anyhow, I mentioned my missing luggage and why I was quite sure it hadn't been left at Al Udeid (I personally saw it placed on the pallet with the rest of my luggage), and he asked if I'd checked the cop tent. He referred to the unit of cops who were awaiting a ride to Balad from Al Udeid when we were (a huge group of people who caught the ride I missed). He said they'd just grabbed bags and dragged them away, and he was sure my bag was there somewhere. Upon my request, he took me to their tent(s) to search. I found the bag in the third tent we checked, and he was gentlemanly enough to haul it back to my tent for me.
My pillow wasn't in it, but other than that, recovering everything else improved my attitude a bit, as you might imagine. When I went home for my sweet sweet half day of freedom, I set about to improve my lot as best I could. My first order of business was to find some way to pad my bed. It seemed like an achievable goal.
First, having recovered my A bag, I pulled out the sleeping bag and attempted to unzip it enough to fit it over the mattress. It's a mummy bag, though, and doesn't suit such purposes as niftily as those cheap Walmart bags do. No dice.
I walked around in the now-deserted tent and found a pile of sheets on a bed adjacent to an empty wall locker. Apparently, here were the leavings of another person who'd bugged out so fast that they hadn't bothered to return their linens to billeting. I sorted through them and found what appeared to be a mattress pad. Judging from the way they cut blankets sheets around here, I'm sure it was meant as a comforter, but it was almost the perfect size pad my mattress, and delightfully fluffy. I also found a sheet that appeared to be made out of proper linen (woohoo), so I appropriated it, as well. Then I took the dirty laundry I'd amassed thus far with my "new" linens, stepped out of the tent, stopped the first passerby, and asked her to direct me to the laundry.
I was soon to learn that I was in possibly the most convenient location in the area--another perk. The showers and toilets were less than 50 feet from my tent, for starters. In tent city, location is everything. If you catch my drift and I think you do. The laundry facilities (tents) were right behind them (so...about 120 feet away). Another plus. The gym is also right in that immediate area.
So...filthy nasty clothes in washer (washers, laundry soap, dryers all free, of course; everything you might possibly need here is free), I returned to my tent and began rummaging through all my bags in order to familiarize myself with the whereabouts of all my "stuff" for the next four months (most of it would stay in the bags as there wasn't enough room in the wall locker for it). I opened my B Bag and discovered...my pillow. I must have shoved it in there at Al Udeid due to lack of space in my A Bag.
Things were looking up.
I found some stray sheets to hang for privacy, with the aid of some parachute cord I'd brought along. I found a broom and made use of it, pulled out some wet wipes and dusted. (Dusting in itself here is an act of optimism.) I found what appeared to be the leg of a chair (one that screws off), and rigged it on my bed with more parachute cord to create a towel rack for myself.
Then I took a shower, tried to crash and came wide awake again. Because it was dark, of course. *sigh*
Sunday night, I managed to fall asleep around 3am, woke at 6am, rushed off to work for 7am roll call only to realize I was one hour late. (Great first impression on the commander, Diana.) No one had mentioned to me that the time had changed since Al Udeid. As I sat through the morning staff meeting and tagged around after Jeff, my new boss, on his site surveys around base, I got that progressive sinking feeling that I was in over my head here. I couldn't figure out why, though. Maybe it was lack of sleep or my general sickness that so destroyed my emotional health, but constantly being confronted with technical gibberish that I haven't seen before (and being expected to understand it) was slowly crushing my spirit.
Monday, I visited the clinic and got some drugs for my fever, sore throat, aches and pains and cough. I also asked for medication to help me sleep and he gave me Benadryl. The directions said to take one so that night I took two. I slept about 1.5 hours and was wakened by an Alarm Red. After that was over, I took another Benadryl and laid there awake for three hours before deciding to just go to work (why not?). So the Benadryl didn't do anything for me sleep-wise and I put in an 18-hour day Tuesday.
Wednesday, as I sat at work yet again and still virtually sleepless, I heard my boss explain to someone that the position I'd filled in the flight is an "A shred" position.
I'd managed to pull my attitude up by the bootstraps and then I get hit with this. Great.
In AF argot, an "A shred" is a specially educated and trained section of my career field. I'm a comm officer, but I'm not trained or normally expected to have any specific technical knowledge. Not so with "A shreds." A shreds are EEs (Electronics Engineers) in education and are also put through an extra month of AF Comm Officer Training.
So what I'm saying is that my boss is the A shred, but since he outranks me by a few months, he naturally moved up to flight commander and I slipped into his position.
Great. Just great.
I'm not easily kept down, though. I seem to have an ability to spring back fairly well from the most daunting obstacles, given a few hours or a couple of days.
By Thursday, my heel blisters had managed to heal enough for me to go to the gym and run. I did a fairly brisk 5 miles--considering my stress levels and sleeplessness, I was long overdue for this release--showered, went to my tent and...slept.
Yes! Sleep! Sweet, delicious, soul-cleansing slumber! I got seven unbroken hours of dreamless sleep that night. The next morning, I awoke with determination to learn my new trade, no matter what it took.*
*As a friend of mine (Capt Sanjoy Malhotra) told me when I first arrived at the Western Range and was overwhelmed with the breadth of information I was expected to know, "It's like walking through fog. Everything seems so unclear and overwhelming right now, but just keep walking, and the fog will clear."
The next day, I even switched my wall locker with the unused one next to me. The wretched thing had been shredding my knuckle every time I opened it and there was no way to lock it, so I secured one with a working lock and a smooth door.
It's never the really big stuff that ruins or makes your day, really. It's the little stuff. Now I had a good wall locker. Things were looking up.
d
