Getting ready

This past week has been interesting, albeit painful.

I deploy in less than 120 days.  The day I leave seems to approach much faster for some reason.  

It's especially hard right now, because the kids are in a new school, in a time of transition, and getting near the time when I am no longer their superhero, but just their dad. The Mrs. is still in employment limbo, searching for the job that will let her achieve clinical hours and get her License in Clinical Social Work (LCSW).  Luckily, we've not entered the "fight for no reason because it's easier to part if we don't face the fears in front of us" stage.  And I think we are both afraid this time, because the reality of injury, or death, is much more familiar than any other time I've deployed.  Before my last deployment, injury and death only happened to other people.  We understood that it was a possibility, but you can't function if you think about the possibility of it being YOU.  Who would drive to work if every time you got in a car, you thought you were going to die in a car accident?

This deployment will see me in a position where I will spend much more time inside the wire than outside.  I will also be in Baghdad.  You'd think this makes me safer, but in reality, the Baghdad FOBs are under near-daily mortar attacks, and when I do leave the FOB, it will be as a big, juicy target with muckety-mucks off to public events.

On Thursday, we drew our RFI (Rapid Fielding Initiative) gear.  This is stuff that is procured on a fast-track, incorporating advances in, or newly developed, personal equipment.  For instance, we received new body armor, that has a steel cable woven through it.  When the cable is pulled, the body armor literally falls to pieces, dropping off the body without effort.  This is especially handy when, for instance, you find yourself on the bottom of a canal.  Other gear we got was fire-retardant uniforms, a plethora of pouches, cold and wet-weather gear (perfect for Baghdad, which is known for its winters and long monsoons season /snark) and basically a very full duffel bag of stuff.  Schlepping that bag across the motor pool lot where they conducted the issue, however, threw my lower back into a tizzy, and it still hasn't bothered to stop hurting.

Other than that, we have yet to receive our household goods, and are getting really tired of sleeping on an air-mattress.  I miss my Dog too, but at least I know exactly when Mom is bringing him here (1 September).  I don't get how my Household goods left our last house on the 22nd of June, and my truck shipped on the 27th, and I got my truck WEEKS ago, but still have no idea when we'll see our household goods.

There is some bright spots in all of this:

1.  I am in Hawaii
2.  I get to hang out with Bouhammer from Bouhammer.com and YouServed Radio today.

--Chuck