Of Pens and Swords

On the subject of coming home, I’ve been in contact with my company. Seems there’s a snafu as to where to put me. They hired in a guy to take my airport while I was gone, and now they’re trying to decide who to keep there, where to move the odd man out. I’d really like to get my airport back, since it’s sort of close to my daughter and Jessica’s son. We’d like very much to see them on the weekends and so forth. If my company offers me a job somewhere else in the states though, I might have to take it. I’m also going to revise my resume and put it out there. I don’t want to leave the company, I think it has a lot to offer me, but then again, I don’t know if I could take being away from my daughter another year or more. I’m sure Jessica feels the same way.

This whole thing has stressed her out too. She’s done a lot of planning and getting ready to have us moved, but that whole plan may be scrapped. On top of that, she’s worried about the whole drastic change of everything anyways.

Hopefully everything works out one way or the other. The thought of being jobless and homeless doesn’t settle all that well with me.

A couple of years ago, in our unit, we had 2 great snorers. One, thankfully, retired. That leaves just one left. For two years now, I’m within the blast radius of him as well. It’s proof god hates me.

I haven’t noticed him snoring the past few months, I’m not sure why. The past week, however, he’s there. I’ve slept through mortar attacks (not here though), tornado’s, machine gun fire all night long, artillery, little-birds hovering over my head for hours at a time…why I can’t sleep through this who knows.

He starts snoring right when I’m trying to go to sleep. He’ll stop after a while, and I do my best to get to sleep, meditate, hum, just lay there exhausted…and as soon as I feel myself rolling into the dive of comfort, he starts up again. I haven’t gotten to sleep before 3am yet, and today is the 3rd day this week that I’ve stayed up all night and well into the next day…This time I just came to my office to get work done at 4 this morning.

I’m getting to the point of either punching him awake, testing out how hot my habenero tabasco sauce really is, stuffing my sweaty sock in his mouth, whatever it takes. Fuck what I’d do to get some sleep…

I decide I’m hungry that night, so I mosey on over to the chow hall to get my grub on. I get stopped while in line, and one of the girls working the headcount door comes over. She says, you can’t wear mixed uniforms in here. I looked down, and saw not one article of any uniform on me. I said as much. She said, well, you’re t-shirt is brown. I said yep, sure is. It also has yellow stitching. In either case, it’s not an authorized part of any uniform that I’m aware of. Simply stating it’s brown doesn’t make it so either. Any other points you’d like to point out? She says, well, either way, your shirt is brown, and you can’t wear it in here. I said, well, you implying one of two things…that either Tshirt makers aren’t allowed to make Brown T-shirts unless they plan on selling them for use in the army, or Army soldiers aren’t allowed to buy brown t-shirts unless they are ones for the uniform. If I were a Marine, or in the Air Force, you’d have nothing to say to me. In either case, I was given this shirt, I didn’t buy it, and it’s part of no uniform I ever wear. So what’s your point? She says, you can’t wear a brown tshirt in here. I said, are you kicking me out? She says no, but I am going to have to ask you to leave, and change your shirt. So , I said, You’re kicking me out, because I’m not wearing a mixed uniform but my shirt happens to be brown…you see where that’s really stupid, don’t you? She said, you can’t wear that shirt, and I said, but you’re not kicking me out either…then the mess sergeant kicked me out.
So I go back, change into my last clean shirt, which happens to be a Marine green tshirt…Hey, it’s not my uniform, they can’t bust me for wearing a mixed uniform…