Believe it or not, the past couple of days have been pretty good.  It’s obvious that I’m going through some things right now, but I am on the road to recovery and maybe by the end of this deployment I will no longer be an angry black woman.  I can’t make any guarantees, but I do promise to put some effort into it.  I am sure it is far more amusing to read the half-psychotic rants of a lunatic, but this is not for your entertainment.  It’s my therapy.  I was told that nobody would be interested in reading anything positive I have to say.  Sad to say that this is evidenced by my hit count.  All the posts that have half a page of curse words have over 100 hits, while any post that says, “I’m happy” has zero.

Thanks for your support.  Way to help out a battle buddy.  And please note the heavy dose of sarcasm.

If you’re not interested in reading any of my positives, get lost.

Bet you didn't know your doctor did a bullet up at Sing-Sing for armed robbery and assault.

So, the first good thing that happened is that they started the French classes.  Half an hour into it, I had learned all of the more important swear words and I am now almost completely fluent, speaking like a true Parisenne.  Okay, maybe not.  She taught us the days of the week and some numbers, basically refresher for me since I took six years of French in junior and senior high school.  I’m sticking with it because it’s something to do.  It was advised that we should get hobbies and do something to better ourselves.  Sure, why not.  Like an inmate, I don’t have anything on my hands but time.  Until they changed the laws, those assholes were leaving prison with law degrees and PhDs.  No reason I shouldn’t do the same.

The second good thing is that I found one of those lame ass Harlequin novels in the Store.  These are absolutely the worst novels ever written.  So why, do you ask, would I be happy about finding something so dumb?  I don’t know.  I’ve always like to read them since I was a teenager.  Sure, they set women’s liberation back about 50 years and the male hero is usually an abusive misogynist that manages to find love in the last four pages of the book, but what’re you gonna do?  At least I’m reading.  What are you doing with your time?

Side note:  Whoever sent those in a care package, can you please send some more?  The ones from the early 80s are the best.   Usually I find them at the thrift store.  Also, the trash.

The third good thing?  I had a talk.  I believe that everything happens for a reason and that God does not ever put more on you than you can bear.  No, I’m not about to start waxing philosophical, but I truly do believe that.  All these events took place at the right time so that I could have this talk that I so desperately needed.

First, I’m grateful because it was actually positive.  It could have gone so much worse.  This could have taken place three weeks ago, and only the good Lord knows how that would have turned out.  It could have ended with me initialing here and signing there, and then some missing stripes and a few zeros off the end of my check, but it did not go that route.

I felt like someone was actually listening to what I had to say, even though I am clearly a lunatic right now.  I’m also glad that I did not go crazy.  I knew that something like this was going to happen eventually and I feared that I would go off the wall, like I usually do.  I somehow managed to maintain some dignity and say what I had to say without losing my cool.

Afterward, I felt gads better.  Like you just don’t even know.  What I took away from this is that eventually there is going to be some change for the better.  I think it might take some time but we’ll get there.  I don’t think we’re going to get CHUs with en suite bathrooms and I don’t think the order to go home is going to come tomorrow, but there’s other things out there that might make this a little more bearable.  I’m just going to hang on to that for right now.

And perhaps the best thing to happen today is that every port-a-pottie I went into was clean.  What???  No, seriously.  You have to count this as a good thing.  You know what I’m talking about.  You just finish lunch and you need to take care of some business and then there’s THAT staring up at your face, reminding you of the Pork Adobo you just stuffed in your craw.  Or perhaps you stumble out of bed at 3AM because nature calls and when you open the door it’s SURPRISE!  I have a present and it’s for you.

Who needs that?  I didn’t even have to make random side trips over to the main building (where there’s indoor plumbing) to do my business.   It’s so serious that it makes you wonder who the hell these people are and what is going on in the privacy of their own homes.  I shudder to think.

Yeah, so that’s it.

Many of us have not had the opportunity to share close living quarters with other people before.  The few short weeks spent in basic training was somehow not enough to prepare us for an extended period of time staring each other in the face.

I have prepared a comprehensive guide to being a better battle buddy.  Hopefully, this will help alleviate some of the problems we are having.

Standard issue alarm clock for all soldiers. It's also designed to play Reveille every 15 minutes starting at 0400.

1.  In the morning, set your alarm clock as early and loudly as possible.  Even though you may be the only person that needs to get up at 400AM, you should set your alarm clock at deafening levels, ensuring that you will wake up everybody else.  Also, it helps to set your alarm clock and then walk away from it.  You are actually helping your battle buddies.  If you set your alarm clock and then leave to take a shower, then you are ensuring that someone else will have to get out of their bed to turn your alarm clock off.  That person will remain awake until they have to get up, thus they will not oversleep their alarm clock, which is also set at maximum levels.  If you have to be up at 6AM and so does the person who sleeps next to you, it does not make any sense to use the same alarm clock. You both should have an alarm clock that goes off at 6AM.  The alarm clocks should compete against each other in loudness.

2.  Any time you leave the building, slam the door as loudly as possible.  It does not matter whether if it is day or night, lights on or lights off.  Matter of fact, don’t even shut the door.  Just leave the door wide open, allowing flies and the smell of the ripe port-a-potties to enter the living space.

3.  During lights out, talk in an unnecessarily loud voice.  If you need to have a conversation with the battle buddy that sleeps across from you, just shout from your bed to hers.  This way everybody will be able to hear your conversation and inviting others who sleep six beds down from you to join in on the fun.  When you come in from outside, keep talking in your outdoor voice and completely ignore everyone who may be sleeping or resting up for their shift.

4.  If it is lights out but you still need to see, get a lamp with a 200-watt light bulb and then shine it up at the ceiling, illuminating half the room, or just shine it directly into your battle buddy’s face.  Lay in bed, watching a movie on your laptop with the light still on, because you need to be able to see your laptop screen with a bright surgical lamp beaming down on you.

5.  Quiet time is the perfect time to start rummaging through all of your bags and tough box.  Do not use lights-on time to search for things you may need later.  Only search for stuff when it is lights-out and people are trying to sleep.  Shuffle through your duffle bags, making as much noise as possible, even turning the bag upside down allowing all contents to bang all over the floor.  Make sure to dig through your tough box as well.  Don’t forget the locker.  Jiggle the locker door for a few minutes, then dig around inside the locker.  Slam the locker door when complete, then reopen it to make sure everything is still in there and then slam the door once more.

6.  No matter what time of day it is, be sure to have your music blasting out of your headphones so that everyone on the other side of the room is able to hear what you’re listening to.  For best results, sing along to the music in an off-key tone in a voice loud enough to drown out the music coming from your headphones.

Eventually this will reanimate and take itself out to the trash.

7.  Try to bring a full meal back to the tent as often as possible.  Make loud smacking noises while you enjoy your food, then when you are done, leave the trash next to your bed for at least a week.  Only once the ripe smell of rotting chicken bones has permeated the air, then can you take the trash out.  If the trash can is overflowing, do not attempt to take it out.  Just leave it for the next person.  If you see any trash laying around on the floor, ignore it.  Also, do not sweep your area.  Allow piles of sand and gravel to accumulate.  Actually, it might be better to sweep the trash into your battle buddy’s area.  Let her deal with it.

8.  Since water is at a premium in this location, do not bathe more than once a week.  If you can go longer without a bath, please do so.  This way no one will complain there is no hot water.  Also, don’t waste water by washing your sheets or clothes.  Leave all dirty clothes on the floor.  Only go to the laundry when your laundry bag is about to burst, and then ask your battle buddy if she would not mind taking your laundry for you.

9.  If you have a cell phone for “official business,” let everyone know how important you are by having the ring tone set to its loudest setting.  Also, the later you receive a phone call the more important you are.  For best results, have someone call you at 2AM then proceed to have a lengthy, loud conversation.  Then have that same person call you back 10 minutes later.  Don’t even think about getting out of bed and going outside to have your conversation, especially if it is late at night and other people are sleeping.

Throw a blanket over top of it and you should be all set.

10.  Plug in your water heater, microwave, laptop, and cell phone charger all into one surge protector, then plug that surge protector into another one that has your lamp, blow dryer, and the surge protector of the person that sleeps next to you.  Plug all of this directly into the wall and turn everything on.  Every time the power goes out, act confused and then blame it on someone else.  Don’t call DPW to report the incident.  Just leave the room and pretend like you have no idea what happened and you don’t know why the power has been out for six hours.

11.  If you see something that does not belong to you, just take it and put it with your stuff.  If someone asks you about it, you can either lie and say you didn’t know it was theirs, or you can say you thought it was yours.  If you break something that belongs to someone else, put it back and pretend you have no idea what happened to it.  Say that someone else used it after you and it was probably them that messed it up.  Also, if you need clean clothes and all of yours are dirty, just borrow someone else’s uniform and then put it back after you’re done.  Don’t wash it though.  Actually, don’t even put it back.  Just keep it.

12.  When you get on Skype or Google Chat to talk to your loved ones, make sure you speak really loudly.  Your family will not be able to hear you if you are not shouting into the microphone.  Then when the connection goes bad, start to complain about how the internet sucks.  It might be possible that someone in the room will be able to do something about the crappy internet connection.

If you follow these rules you are sure to maximise your deployment experience.  You will be well-liked in the barracks and no one will have a bad thing to say about you.  If you remember that everything is about you, and no one else, you should not have any problems.

When you are far away from everything that is comfortable and familiar, you have to make do with what you’ve got.  Pops told me that in order to cope better out here, I need to make a life for myself.  Get a hobby, get into a routine, find something that’s enjoyable.  Sooner or later the time will pass and then one day it’ll be time to go home.  I took his advice.  I found a piano in the USO and even though I suck at it, I decided to go in there everyday and play for an hour.  I heard they are offering French lessons soon, so I signed up for that, plus some college courses.  All that study should keep me busy.  And then of course, there’s running.  I honestly enjoy running now that I’m somewhat decent at it.  I’m not the fastest runner and I will never come in first but it has become rather enjoyable for me.  Before this deployment, I was running a road race almost every weekend, so I was very happy to know that they had 5Ks and other races here.

Since I’ve been here my 5k time has improved dramatically.  I’m not at my goal of sub-25 minutes, but I’m working on it and that is helping me pass the time here.  I know that is not much:  shitty playing on the piano and running, but that is all I’ve got to go with right now so I am clinging to it.  I am not magically cured, but it’s been working for me.

But what do you know… these mother fuckers are doing everything in their power to strip away even the most minute happiness I can find.  I did not think it was even possible.  You never have much freedom in the army; you have even less when you’re in a war zone.  I knew that coming here, but little did I know that I would be treated worse than any prisoner in a maximum security penitentiary.

When we first arrived they put out a memo (you got the memo, right?) about the civilian clothes policy.  The long and short of it is that we are not permitted to wear civilian clothes.  I’m kind of annoyed at it, but I guess I’ll wait till next summer to prance around in my daisy dukes and bikini top (since that’s all I packed).  There were a few exceptions to the policy and even though I thought it was stupid, I figured it was a compromise in a system where everyone on the bottom is a piece of shit and you just have to deal with it.

I don’t really need to quote the whole memo but one of the exceptions is that we could wear civilian clothes to MWR events.  One such MWR event is the monthly 5K run.  There’s a weekly fun run, but the monthly run is usually in honour of some kind of holiday and they give you a t-shirt for it.  Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, Martin Luther King, Marine Corps birthday, whatever they can find, they’ll have a race for it and you get a t-shirt if you finish in a reasonable amount of time.  Sure, it’s the same route every time and there’s a whole bunch of shitheads with poor race etiquette, but the point is for me to find something to focus on other than being depressed.

They have the races at 6AM and the whole thing takes like 30 minutes, if you’re a somewhat decent runner.  When the race is over you get some breakfast or you get a shower and then you put on your uniform and return to your regularly scheduled program.  Nobody is trying to hang around in their sweaty running clothes all day long.

The dictators have issued a new fatwa, or rather they claim to have clarified a previously issued fatwa. You may not wear civilian clothes at the MWR races.  This is what makes me want to stab myself in the eye.  This is what demoralizes me.  You should be happy that people are getting out of their fucking beds at that ungodly hour to do any form of physical exercise.  When they made us do mandatory PT back in Texas, you should have heard the complaining.  It was godawful.  Now you have people willing to get up on their own, without being forced, to do something physical and there’s a problem.  This shit is not required.  I’m doing it because I think it’s good for me, both mentally and physically.  I think as you should be saying, “Well, at least they’re doing something constructive.”  We’re not getting out of our beds at 6AM to shit in the fucking shower, or to rape, burn and pillage.

The crazy part is that this is like the fourth race I’ve run in civilian clothes and suddenly now everyone wants to clarify things.  I am not the only one; there’s several of us and we are all dressed decently, in running clothes.  No one is coming out in a thong or an offensive t-shirt, or something that will cause alarm.  Which they should be fucking happy, because I normally wear either teeny-tiny booty shorts or some skintight obscene pants.  I put some thought into what I would wear while on an army base, serving on active duty.  That is what eats me alive is that they didn’t give any of us a chance to show that we know how to act like civilised human beings.  They automatically assumed that everyone would go ape shit.  The civilian clothes policy was idiotic from jump, but now it’s just an example of sheer fuckery.  I know it is ridiculous but I get this mental image of some jackass watching from afar, like, “Hmm, I think I see a little bit of happiness.  I MUST CRUSH IT!!”  Everyone claims they understand the reasons why we’re not being allowed to wear civilian clothes.  I’ve heard everything from a fear of anarchy to a fear of sexual assault.  I’m sorry, but I think my chances of being gang raped in the middle of a 5K race is low.

All I really wanted to do was have one run where I am actually comfortable.  I don’t have the stupid army shorts crawling up my ass, or cutting off my circulation, or the too-hot army PT shirt rubbing my skin raw.   For 30 minutes once or twice a month, I am a human being, a normal human being.  When I am running, no one is talking to me.  There is no one else but me.  For 30 minutes.  And now I do not even have that.

But whatever.   There’s not much I can do about it except rebel in my usual fashion.  I will no longer participate in any of the 5K races.  I will stay my fat lazy ass in my bed.  I don’t need to get up when it’s fucking freezing cold outside to run no-goddamn-where, to collect a whole bunch of T-shirts that I’m not allowed to wear anyway, and I’ll probably just set those bitches on fire when I get home so I can erase all memories of this living abortion.

Wow, I think I have something positive to say.  This actually might not turn out to be a depressing bitch fest and I’m going to do my best to maintain that today.  What a change.  Or maybe my happy pills are kicking in and I’m just deluding myself into thinking that I have something positive to say.

At any rate, this weekend I got a chance to do some travelling.  I had an appointment at another location so a few of us got the opportunity to make the drive out there.  There’s really not a whole lot to see once you leave the safety of T-walls, armed guards and laser beams.  It’s just a lot of sand and nothingness.  This is actually the third time I’ve been able to leave and when I left that first time I had this vision that there would be a Bedouin encampment right outside the gate and I’d see belly-dancers and camels everywhere.

Yeah, I’ll grant that I’ve been watching far too many movies. 

I slept most of the way, anyway.  As you all have figured out, I don’t sleep at night.  By the time I dozed off around 4AM, it was time to get up.  An endless stream of sand grains put me to sleep real fast, but eventually we got where we were going and my appointment did not last long.

We were instructed to conduct our business and then to spend a reasonable amount of time sightseeing.  Since it was our off day anyway (yeah, we get those in the army), it didn’t really matter how long we stayed as long as we didn’t overdo it. 

You know what I felt like?  I felt like some backwoods hilly-billy coming from the stone ages to the big bright lights of the city.  All right, yeah, I am exaggerating again, but we really are getting shit on.  Sure, it’s an army base and army bases typically suck, but when you compare to how we’re living right now to what we went to visit, there’s just no comparison.  I’ll put it like this, you’re staying at the Motel 6 on Route 40 while everyone else lives it up at the Hilton on the Chesapeake.  You’ve been to Route 40.  You know what I’m talking about.

It’s little things in life that you really start to appreciate once you’re forced to do without:  like indoor plumbing and the ability to take a crap without having to get fully dressed first.  Or real silverware and a glass to drink your water from.  Something you probably don’t even notice back home:  SIDEWALKS.  Seriously, we have to walk everywhere and I don’t give a shit about that, but a sidewalk would be nice so I don’t get gunned down in the streets by these lunatics. 

The three of us were like, wow… look at that…trees.  Oooh.  A movie theatre that isn’t out of focus and you can actually hear the sound properly.  Aaah.  Paved roads.  Yeah, it was sad.  We wanted to eat in the dining facility (which I find so laughable).  We had been in there before and the only reason why we wanted to eat there is because they have real plates, and knives that won’t break when you try to cut that shoe leather they call steak. Isn’t that some shit?  Unfortunately, due to time constraints we were forced to eat at one of the fast food joints.  I’m not real big on fast food and my pizza was super greasy.  I ended up eating the cheese off it and then throwing the rest away.

We went to a bazaar, which is not entirely different than the one they have here, but it just seemed to be more fun and more interesting because we were somewhere else.  It was crazy because we went into the PX and even though they have the same shit (actually, a bit more selection) I had this strong desire to buy shit even though I didn’t really need it.  I just wanted to be able to say, “I bought it at the other base.”  I practiced restraint though.  Someone has already taken note of my spending habits.  (I’ll bitch about that in another blog.)

To rest up for the trip home, we sat down in the MWR, which is way nicer than ours.  Too bad we weren’t stationed here.  Maybe I wouldn’t feel like an illegal immigrant.

On the way back, I started thinking about what someone had said to me.  I don’t do too much complaining in front of other people.  Yes, I bitch a lot here and my facial expression pretty much lets everybody know how I feel, but for the most part I just mind my own business and keep to myself.  But someone asked me what I thought of this deployment and I had to tell him straight up, “This sucks monkey balls.”

He proceeded to tell me about his previous deployment where they ate MREs most days and they slept on cots, in some kind of makeshift building that was either too hot or too cold.  His battle buddy ending up having to sleep in the field because of whatever mission they were on.  You know, I really hate when people say stuff like this to me:  “when you think you have it bad, think of someone else who has it much worse.”

We can always play the “someone has it much worse game.”  So, this guy was sleeping in a draughty building and another guy was in the field.  I pointed out, yeah, that sounds shitty, but what about homeless people?  Their lives suck too.  So which is worse?

Really, a person can only base their feelings off their own experiences.  I’ve never slept in the street.  I have never slept in the field (except that one day in basic).  Prior to my arrival here, I’ve never had to share anything with anybody, but now I’m forced to sleep in close quarters with people I would cross the street to avoid in my regular life.  For me, this is rock bottom.  I can’t relate to what it was like for him to have eaten MREs for six months straight.  I can’t even imagine. 

I have more to say on how that particular line of thought related to my trip but I remembered that I mentioned that I wasn’t going to bitch in today’s blog.  At any rate, I’ll say that I’m glad that I was able to get away from everyone and do something different, even if it was only just having a greasy pizza and strolling through the PX.  I was sad to have to come back and I hope I get more opportunities, but I know I got to share the wealth.  There’s so many of us who need a chance to get away.

Let’s take x white teachers plus y black students plus z inappropriate slavery questions and figure out how many problems will result.

In order to figure out this problem, let’s examine some facts.

So, a group of nine teachers at an elementary school in Georgia decided that it would be a really awesome idea to correlate their students’ coursework in Social Studies with their math homework.  In theory, this sounds like a great idea.

But what if your child, black, white or Chinese, came home with a math problem like these:

Each tree has 56 oranges.  If 8 slaves picked them equally, how many oranges did each slave pick?

If Frederick gets two beatings a day, how many beatings will he get in one week?

I know that I have a warped sense of humour, but when I first read this article I started laughing.  It’s so embarrassing that it’s funny.  If my kid came home with this sort of nonsense, his answers would be something like this:

Q.  If Frederick gets two beatings a day, how many beatings will he get in one week?

A.  None, because Frederick will shoot his master and join the Underground Railroad.

But seriously, the teachers at this school really ought to be ashamed of themselves.  Let met caveat by saying that I do not know the true racial makeup of the teachers nor do I know the racial makeup of the students with this math homework.  Given the location this incident occurred, I will say the teachers were probably mostly white and the students were mostly white with a good helping of black kids.  It’s so ridiculous that only white teachers would come up with this sort of crap, and if by some unlikely chance that there were black teachers involved, it just makes the whole thing even more laughable.

There are plenty of ways to teach students about slavery, but this is a little bit over the top.  I am all for not pretending that slavery didn’t happen.  What amazes me about this situation is that no one sat down to think if it might offend someone.  I do not believe that every white person is racist.  I bet none of these teachers are racists (if they are all white).  It just didn’t occur to them how idiotic this situation is.  And that’s what’s so scary, how people just don’t think.  Nobody ever stops to think how other people might feel about a certain situation.

The NAACP wants the teachers fired.  Everyone always wants to dole out the maximum punishment, but as offensive as this is, I don’t think the teachers should be fired.  I think they should attend some serious sensitivity training.  They should also have to do some role reversal where they get to walk in other people’s shoes for a little while, to see how it feels to always be the butt of someone’s joke.  I doubt these teachers are racist, just thoughtless.

So, now that we’ve had time to consider the above question, you will discover that there is no solution.  So here’s a new question:

9 teachers send out 5 resumes a day for 5 days. What is the maximum amount of rejection letters that can be written in response?

The new year is well underway and I’ve been absent from this blog for so long because I haven’t had much to say.  I am so morose of late that there was no point in really writing anything.  It would just be more of the same sorry business and who really wants to read that?  I don’t even want to write it.

Christmas came and went.  It was a very depressing affair, consisting of a mandatory, excuse me, highly encouraged to attend, party.  I spent all those years bah humbuging the mandatory party back home.  It’s so sad what you miss when you don’t have it anymore.  So the base has this policy that no unit can request special catering on, before or after a major holiday.  There is just not enough resources to fill the possibility of multiple requests coming from the units that are here.  So since there isn’t a Boston Market or somebody’s grandmother’s kitchen around the corner, we had to make do with ONE turkey that someone put on the grill and some bags of popcorn and Danish butter cookies.  You just have no idea how sad I was when I saw the “spread.”  I may not be the 1%, but I have never had the type of Christmas where little Timmy is like, “Please sir, may I have some more?”  I felt like a poor kid.  Is that very selfish?  I don’t know, but that is how I felt.

Then they gave us iPods that a company had donated to us.  I know it sounds so ungrateful, but I don’t want an iPod.  In fact, I haven’t even opened up the box.  It’s been sitting on the cot behind my bed since Christmas Day.  What I’m going to do with it, who knows.  I already have two iPods and an iPhone.  Everyone in my family has an iPod, including the baby.  Now that doesn’t sound like a poor kid, but I would have traded that damn iPod for a REAL holiday meal, shared with friends.

As it were, I did at least go to the chow hall with someone I actually like, rather than being in forced company with someone out of the necessity of having a battle buddy.  “A” and I had dinner together and we talked about all the things we missed from back home.  She wanted egg nog and I wanted champagne.  She had a salad and I had a dried piece of prime rib and an onion.

New Year’s was just as bad.  We got up to the run the 5K and seriously, that was like the highlight of my day because I ran my fastest 5K time ever.  After that, we went for breakfast and I laid in bed most of the day.  There was a party at the USO but we decided not to go.  The USO is about as big as my old apartment and the WHOLE ENTIRE base was invited.  Uhm, yeah, crowded party, not my thing.  I stayed in bed watching James Bond movies and then I realised, “Oh, it’s 2012.”  I remarked to SF that I haven’t stayed in on a New Year’s ever, except that one time that the Jackass stood me up.

The real truth is that 2011 was a great year for me.  It ended pretty shitty, but the on the whole it was spectacular.  I am out of debt.  I started a real retirement fund.  I finally finished school.  There’s really nothing else I could have asked for in the year.  I guess I owe some of that in part to this damn deployment but it is very difficult for me to be grateful right about now.  I am just praying that 2012 ends way better than it’s started.

We are still living in tents, although some have moved out.  From the female tent, two of the VIPs are gone and the rest of the officers are expected to be gone within two weeks.  I am a little bit nervous about this because that means the tent will go back to being Hoodville once all the rank is gone.  I already have to drug myself to sleep; I don’t know how much further I can go.

I was just thinking to myself, of all the dumb ass mistakes in life.  So, when I was 16, this boy tried to get me to have sex with him in the bathroom.  On second thought I decided it was a stupid idea and didn’t follow through.  When I was 19, I was away at college and got invited to a party.  Almost everyone was doing drugs and totally trashed.  Someone offered me a hit and when I thought about it, I decided it was a dumb idea and I left the party.  When I was 22, a relative asked to borrow a huge some of money from me.  When I really thought about it, I decided that I would probably never see my money again so I said no.  When I was 32, someone asked me if I wanted to deploy…………….

Why didn’t I really think about this?

I can now add this to the list of dumb things that I did because I never thought it fully through.

I wonder where that guy from Massachusetts is.  About three years ago, I took the Kid up to Massachusetts to see the fireworks.  They do it up real big up there, with quaint picnics on the banks of the Charles.  This happy couple that was next to us offered us some food because we didn’t realise what a spectacle the whole thing was.  Turns out this guy, an older man, had been in the military for twenty years.  We talked about our careers and I told him that I always felt bad that I hadn’t yet deployed.  Most of the people from my AIT class had gone on one or two deployments.  I was one of the few that hadn’t.  He said, “Don’t be too eager to do it.  It’s not for everyone.”  I said, “Well, I want to do my duty.  I knew what I was doing when I signed up and I know that any minute I could get called up to go.”  He said, “If it’s not your time, it’s just not your time.  Don’t go looking for something that isn’t yours.”

Now, gee, why didn’t I listen to the advice of a total stranger?  Guy from Massachusetts, you were so right.

I let the hundred day mark pass without much fanfare because it was no more special than day 99 or day 101.   All these days are the same and
mean nothing.  A fellow soldier said, “Oh, tomorrow is Friday.”  So what?  Are you going to a party?  I thought not.

The Legend of the PT Hat
The Watch Cap, or more commonly known, the PT Hat is a soft, comfortable affair, perfect for cold weather conditions.  It is alsouseful for keeping one’s hair neat while sleeping.  You can also use it to keep out the light if your battle buddy is a scary asshole and wants to keep the room lights on at night.  Because of its hideous ACU green colour, I never really thought of it as a fashion statement.  I would not consider wearing it with any of my civilian clothes.  Otherwise, it is a perfectly functional piece of clothing equipment.

Yet, it must be regulated to prevent abuse.

The desert has two temperatures:  hot and cold.  Oh, there are varying degrees of hot and cold, such as fucking hot or fucking cold, but really when you look at it, there’s no in between.  When I first arrived here, it was hot and then one day it was suddenly cold.  For a few days it has been fucking cold.  When it became cold, I whipped out the handy PT hat because it is the only headgear authorized to keep my ears warm.  Since colourful scarves and fur muffs are not permitted for use while in uniform, the PT hat is a trusty backup.

However, a fatwa has been issued declaring the PT hat is not for use when it is cold.  It is not for use when it is fucking cold.  It is only authorized for use when wearing the APFU, or in layperson terms, the PT uniform.  It is only authorized for wear with the ACU if it is 32 degrees or colder.  Excuse me while I get out of my thermometer.  Oh wait, the Army did not issue me one.  When I go outside my body tells me it is cold or fucking cold.  It does not tell me the temperature.  It says, “Hey, asshole, put on a jacket and a warm hat.  Some gloves might be nice.”  Since I do not have a television, a radio, weather gauge or any other temperature reading device I have no idea whether it is 32 degrees or not.  I just know that my ears tingle from how cold and dry it is, and sometimes my cheeks are numb by the time I arrive at my destination because the wind adds to the feeling of fucking cold.

Because I am a lowly E5, I do not have my own personal vehicle with heat.  I have to walk everywhere, about a half a mile to work or chow.  This is not a great distance at all and I am not complaining.  However, a half a mile seems like six miles when your ears are freezing.  Truthfully, these past few days when it has been fucking cold, I have no idea what the temperature was.  Honestly, it could have been 40 degrees.  It could have been 45.  I just know that I was a popsicle by the time I got to work.  I had to rub life back into my ears.

But I cannot keep them warm because it is only 36 degrees outside and not 32.

And I am also not permitted to turn the heat on in the office for fear the equipment will overheat.

The Mysterious Shower Shitter
When I was Up North, I received a curious message that a shower shitter was on the loose in Dust City.  I did not understand what this meant.  What is a shower shitter, you might ask?  I asked this very same question and was informed that a shower shitter is a person who shits in the shower.  Many of us have pissed in the shower, and this is really no big deal because urine is easy to go down the drain.  A wad of shit is far more difficult to drain because of its clump like nature.  Of course, there are always leaky shits, but still there may be a remnant of corn or some other insoluble fibre that did not digest properly, left behind and clogging up the shower drain.

Fortunately, the shower shitter is male, so I will not run into this individual.  I just know that he is a cunning little bastard, dropping his dookies on the sly when no one else is around in the shower unit.  He leaves his goodies behind for some other unsuspecting sod to happen upon when he opens the shower curtain to bathe.
Surprise!  I bought a present and it’s for you.

The Mysterious Shower Shitter has struck twice three times since we’ve encamped here.  There was one incident in which the culprit was nice enough to leave his dumplings in a bag in the shower.  It has become such a situation that the Powers-That-Be are considering posting a shower guard.  You will have to forfeit your ID upon entrance of the shower unit.  You will bathe and when your shower is complete, the shower guard will inspect your shower cubicle.  Upon finding that the shower is clear, you will receive your ID back.  This should shank the Shower Shitter’s shocking shadowy shit shenanigans.  If you should be caught shitting in the shower, you will be henceforth removed to the Commander where you will have to explain,

“WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?”

But It’s a Fresh Ass
We all know that communal living can lead us to find out many things about our friends and co-workers in ways that we wish would not have ever happened.  There is something to be said about too much information.  Sometimes you just really don’t want to know.  Also, in communal living, modesty does not really have a place.  We do not have individual rooms or private spaces.  If you have to change your clothes, you just strip down and change your clothes.  Of course, you’re careful to keep your eyes averted.  Even if you are a pervert, you don’t actually want to look like a pervert. But even in communal living, there are certain rules to abide by.

One such rule is DO NOT WIPE YOUR ASS IN FRONT OF EVERYONE.

So, a specialist and I were having a conversation with another junior-ranking soldier.  We were talking about hair, or whatever it is women talk about.  The junior-ranking soldier was changing her clothes.  This is not a big deal.  The specialist and I were more focused towards each other, not really looking at the other junior-ranking soldier.

However, out of the corner of my periphery, I noticed that she was sitting in a rather odd position on her bed.  Much like a train wreck, I could not help myself and I turned to stare at her.  I realized that she was wiping her ass.

Now, there are no toilets in the rooms.  There are no showers.  There is no source of running water.  I asked, “Uhm, what are you doing?”  I hope to God that she wouldn’t say that she was taking a crap or pissing because that would be just nasty, since she was sitting on her
bed.

But she said, “I’m changing my underwear.”  Okay, that’s fine.  But why is your hand up your ass?  “Oh, I always wipe my ass when I change my underwear.”  Again, I think there’s nothing really wrong with that, but in public? In front of everyone?  With one leg over here and another leg over there, drop down and get your eagle on with a baby wipe?

The specialist I was talking to also looked thoroughly disgusted.  The junior soldier looked at us as if WE were the ones with the problem.  I just walked away, because really, after that, what can you say?

Exactly.

I have now experienced it all.  Growing up, it was always Thanksgiving with the immediate family.  Very rarely did we invite any one over.  Less rarely did we go to someone else’s house.  Once or twice, we ate out for Thanksgiving.  Once, we had that traditional Thanksgiving with the WHOLE family, including grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles.  I’ve had a Thanksgiving potluck on the few occasions I’ve had to work on the holiday.  I’ve even had Thanksgiving at home alone, a one person feast in front of my computer.  Now, I’ve had a Thanksgiving in a war zone. 

It seems like any other day.  There’s really no festive air.  I don’t have the luxury of too-early Christmas decorations to bemoan.  I didn’t get the chance to grocery shop and see all the Thanksgiving fixin’s on display.  In my humble barracks there is no scent of pies baking.  It just doesn’t feel like Thanksgiving, but it is despite clear skies and mild temperatures.

They did their best, though to get us in the spirit of things.  The chow hall put on quite a spread, but it’s not home, you know?  At home, I don’t have to line up outside waiting to get in.  My mother don’t ask me for my ID card and my signature in order to eat.  There is definitely no foreign national at the stove, fixing my plate for me.  That’s just the nature of the beast.  They decorated the place and begrudgingly I will admit that it was nice.

There was a huge cornocopia with real fruit displayed as a centerpiece.  There was even ice sculptures.  Who doesn’t like ice sculptures?  But the baked ham, the large tin of green beans and even the turkey reminded me that I am not at home.  (We don’t eat any of those things at Thanksgiving.)  At first I wasn’t even going to go to dinner, but thanks to the rule about having a battle buddy everywhere you go, I had to go with my roommate. 

In a way, I was kind of glad I did.  Who wants to be laying up in their bed staring at the ceiling, alone, on Thanksgiving night?  That’s just sad.

I ate a ribeye and shrimp cocktail for dinner.  Followed up with a huge hunk of cake and some ice cream.  I made my dining partners say a prayer, because that’s what we do at home.  The ribeye was dry but I ate it anyway.  As I chewed on the tough meat, I looked around.  I was having Thanksgiving dinner with two people I don’t know that well only because the situation necessitated it.  There were other people that sat alone.  That meant they had come with someone only to be abandoned.  That’s just depressing.

I was slightly cheered up because they brought sparkling grape juice.  Oh, it can never replace a good red, but it was the thought that counted.  After dinner was over, I didn’t get geared up for Black Friday shopping, instead I went back to the barracks to take a nap before my night watch began.  Before I drifted off to sleep I told myself that no matter what time of the year it is when I get back home, I’m going to have myself a real Thanksgiving.

I had hoped that I wouldn’t have to write about such things, but I guess it was kind of inevitable.  Since I’ve been here there’s been a death.  A convoy leaving the base came into contact with an IED.  Four soldiers were seriously wounded and one was killed.  One of the wounded soldiers lost his leg.

Even though we don’t necessarily keep track of the convoys, we are concerned with anything that happens against US Forces, so immediately when the incident occurred we knew what was happening.  Our part in the whole procedure is to make sure the MEDEVACs get out there to help any injured troops.  There’s a specific time frame in which we’ve got to react.  We did our job, but some things we just can’t control:  life and death.

When we got the word that one soldier had lost his life, I felt strange.  I think you can’t help yourself and you feel like shit.  When you first hear about it, you get scared.  This could happen to any of us.  It may not be an IED on a convoy but it could be rockets or kidnapping or surface to air fire as you ride in one of the birds.  Or maybe one of these local nationals that are working around here could suddenly turn on you, like what happened to that Navy lieutenant in Afghanistan.

Then when you realize you’re safe, you breathe a sigh of relief.  It’s not you.  Your next of kin won’t be getting an ominous knock at the door.  No one in your family will suffer any agony or grief.  You thank your god, count your blessings or your luck and move on with your life, feeling sorry for that poor bastard.  Then that’s when you start to feel guilty.  You’re happy it’s not you but then you think about what his closest battle buddies are feeling, especially the guy who lost his leg.  His riding mate is gone and now he’s an amputee.  Life sucks for him.  Their families will be awakened in the dead of night by strangers to tell them the sorry news.  Somebody’s mother, father, sister, brother, child, husband or wife will grieve.

It’s very sobering, alarming and dizzying all at the same time.