Before someone calls the Red Cross.
I'm fine. Today is day 99. I've just been busy on legitimate stuff or busy postponing the actual work, which takes more effort than just doing it but is somehow both more pleasurable (because almost anything can be fun when you really should be doing something else) and more stressful. On the up side, though, this weekend will simply fly by because I have about five days' worth of work to finish in the next 36 hours.
But first, a rambling note to y'all. Because Jeff told me to, that's why.
The SSgt down the hall had a pot of Starbucks this morning and sent me a personal invite to partake. I'm on my second cup and I just found the Poptarts in the Shirt's stash.* It's a brisk morning and quiet. It's a good day to be alive.
* The Shirt gets random care packages sent to the unit in general and keeps a storeroom full of stuff for us to pick through should we need anything. There's everything from puzzles, decks of cards, shampoo, books and toothbrushes to various munchie items. Poptarts are a rare treat. They go fast.
I woke in the middle of the night to a very large BOOM. It's an unpleasant way to emerge from sleep, right up there with an unfamiliar sound in the house that isn't readily identifiable with a snoring dog or mischievous cats. I laid there waiting for the siren that would indicate the command post was aware we had incoming. When it didn't come, I donned my gear* and trotted to the toilet...since I was awake.
* I'm always saying this, but I'm not sure I've explained it. We wear out bulletproof vest and kevlar helmet at any time we are not in a hardened or semi-hardened facility or one of the chow halls. The additional weight one carries is proportional to the size the individual is to begin with. My gear adds 20 pounds to what I carry everywhere.
I just checked my email messages at work and found three notices for controlled detonations--two of them around the time I was awakened so unpleasantly. Thanks for the, uh, warning, guys.
There's something about the extreme discomfort of leaving my warm bed to go to the toilet (about 50 yards distant) combined with the utter inconvenience of having to don body armor to take a weewee that makes me need to relieve myself not once, but often twice in the course of the night. Maybe it's confirmation bias, but there appears to be a causal correlation there.
In other news, my commander started yesterday's roll call with the observation that many of us have less than 30 days left here. We all cheered, me perhaps louder than the rest. Plus, I did a little dance. Then he looked around and his eyes lit on me, "Except you," he said. "Your replacement isn't coming in 'til later. We have to talk."
Oh hahaha. I thought. I was pretty sure, anyway. I mean, it's the Senior* who would have been him pulling me aside, if what the CC said was true. Anyway...I've been in regular correspondence with my replacement--she is my new best friend and I haven't even met her yet--and she hasn't breathed a word about any holdups in the scheduling.
* "Seenyur," not "Sinyore." Slang for Senior Master Sergeant, although the proper abbreviation for this rank is still "Sergeant." He's our superintendent, in charge of manpower issues and any other reins that need holding at any given moment.
Yes. It was a joke, of course. I must make an easy butt (don't respond to that; just...let the opportunity pass you by). But he looked so serious when he said it, he had me for a minute.
Over breakfast, I told the commander I didn't think he was very funny. Now, what would have been funny was if he'd informed me my relief had turned up pregnant and it was too late to get anyone else in for the next rotation. Now that would have been a scream.
Off to work. Y'all be good. If you can't be good, at least be good at it.
d
