A Text Message Is No Place For The D-Word!

As you may or may not know, Mike graduated Thursday and is officially a Cavalry Scout. He received his orders a few days prior to graduation and was expecting to go back home and resume his life as usual, with the exception of going to drills and training once a month with his Unit.

He left Ft. Knox at noon on Thursday and got home in Pennsylvania sometime after 1am.

We left Ft. Knox shortly after Mike did (we went shopping in the PX! Too neat!!) Since we didn't have to be anywhere at any specific time, we decided we deserved to be tourists this once. We never got to do it when I was younger so we were doing it now!

We stopped to see the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, TN. AWESOME!! We went shopping in the store and then went across the parking lot to shop in the Opry Mills mall. We ate at the Rainforest Cafe in there and really relaxed for the first time in a long time.

We got a hotel outside of Nashville and slept like a bunch of rocks (I think we actually forgot to turn off the lights in the hotel room - we were that tired!)

The next morning, we stopped at Lookout Mountain, Ruby Falls and Rock City. It was while we were in the gift shop at Ruby Falls, looking at keychains that I got the worst text message I have ever gotten.

It was from Mike.

It was pretty simple.

It said, "I'm f***ing deployed! They just pulled me. I go train now."

(notice only ONE instance of the F-word, this is pretty amazing considering he just got done with OSUT)

My heart stopped. Hell! The whole world stopped spinning! I'm pretty sure I actually heard it screech to a halt!

Now, my first reaction was to call him. He didn't answer. So I called again (not like me, but I was starting to panic at this point). This time he picked up and hung up immediately. Hmmmm....

I get a text message a few seconds later. "Can't talk. That's why I hung up"

HUH???

Can't talk because he's upset?

Can't talk because he's celebrating?

Can't talk because he's with a {insert any Army personnel higher than a Private here}?



Talk about creating a need for therapy!

We got in the car, drove to Starbucks (I had already been on a Starbucks hunt since the hotel and there was one at the top of the mountain next to Rock City) and tried to grab a hold of my wildly out of control emotions.


At this point, we had already planned on stopping at Stone Mountain in Georgia to show the girls. I had spent a few summers there as a teenager and wanted to show them how neat it was. So we got on the highway and headed for Atlanta.

While walking around Stone Mountain, he finally called me back. I wanted to hug him so bad at that point but just hearing his voice and knowing that he was calm helped me a lot.

He is staying at Fort Indiantown Gap until Monday when he goes home to get his affairs in order and spend some time with his family. His dad's family is up there so he will get to spend Thanksgiving with them there.

Then he is off to catch up with his Unit that deployed in September. They are still in Mississippi going through Stryker training. He ships out to Iraq sometime in the beginning of 2009.


I'm fairly certain that I am still in denial. But I had to start writing it down because I feel like my body is reacting without my brain going along for the ride. I'm sick to my stomach constantly but my brain hasn't actually grasped the situation.

I'm not looking forward to being near me when it sinks in.

It is not going to be pretty.

It Seems He Thought That Call Sucked Too

I got a letter from him that arrived yesterday. He apologized more than a few times, and explained some of the chaos and aggravation he was enduring as he waited to make a call. He also said he was very VERY upset after hanging up.

That's probably the hardest part, hanging up and then realizing that you could maybe fix what just went wrong with just another few seconds on the phone...but you can't call back.

The Army is teaching us all sorts of new things about ourselves. Mostly I think it's teaching us to be in control of everything. Not just your physical actions. Your thoughts effect your performance and conversations could very well be the last one you ever have. Taking for granted that you'll always be able to apologize or try to repair whatever was broken is not a luxury the military affords us. I think Basic Training is for the family as well as the Soldier. We need to learn to say what our hearts mean first, and not to waste one precious moment we have on the phone or in person. Anger and frustration will just have to sit on hold until we have finished our call and hung up, or until we've dropped them off at their base. Then we can vent to our fellow Army parents/spouses/siblings and know that we are helping our Soldiers maintain the positive focus they need to succeed.

Ok, I'm starting to sound like a self help book. I just wanted to let you know he wrote me and apologized. Obviously our last call during OSUT will be memorable, but only because it taught us both something.

Phone call, promotion and graduation info

I got a 5 minute call today! :D

Mike is now PV2!! Hooah!!!!

He also said he's sending details (as soon as he gets them) about the graduation dinner. It's the night before so we'll have to zoom up there a little earlier than expected. Works for me!! I get to see him for more than a few minutes!!! :D

I was expecting to watch his graduation and maybe see him for 20 minutes, a few hours tops, on November 20. But getting to go to a dinner with him too is just awesome! Even if I have to share him with his Dad's family...if Mike is happy then I'm happy.

I also logged into his AIM account and let all his buddies know he wanted them to write to him. After asking him in this phone call, I put his address in the status window. I hope some of them write, he really is boosted by others writing to him. It means a lot when someone sits down and writes out (or even types) a letter and takes the time and makes the effort to send it. In this day of instant messages and instant gratification...most people just don't send letters through the mail anymore.

Ok, gotta fly and get some work done. Going to work on my Army store so I can start promoting stuff.

Oh, and I got approved to sell US Cavalry items through my sites as well!! That store just rocks!! LOL

now...really...going to work.

later!!

:)

Family Weekend - part 1

Mike's family weekend was 10-3 through 10-5. We arrived early thinking he had a 2 hour leave on 10-2 but that didn't turn out to be the case. We did get to circle his barracks for 1.5 hours, til the DS's noticed me and asked if I needed help. I told them what I was there for, and reluctantly, who I was there for...JUST in case he was waiting somewhere for me. He wasn't. According to him, when he told me the next day, he was in the large group of what Anastasia called "dirt bags" (they were Soldiers sitting on the ground - to her they looked like bags of dirt. Hey, she's 7!) And he watched us drive by all 903 times.

We left and went through a drive through, brought food back to the hotel in Elizabethtown and proceeded to pass out without eating any of it. At this point I'd been up for 37 hours, 16 of it spent driving on the highway. I was totally wiped out.

We were all up early the next morning and went to breakfast and then headed back to the base. His ceremony was due to begin at 13:00 but I wasn't taking any chances. The night before the DS said the doors would open by 12:30...so we were there by 11:45. They had some tanks and a Humvee out for people to get their picture taken with. The girls had a blast on/in them.

We wandered around the front of the Olive Theater for a while, met up with one of the other Mom's I'd talked to on GAP and eventually got to go inside and get a seat. There was a group of bald men in camo sitting up near the front and I was afraid if I took one look at them I'd start crying so I sent my mom and the girls up to take a picture of them, hoping we could figure out which was Mike by looking at the pic on my camera. No chance. I can see it enlarged now and I still don't know which was him.

They are all bald, wearing camouflage and can't make eye contact with you. It's a semi-hopeless endeavor. Then a woman announced that if your Soldier was graduating, he would not be seated in the theater yet. Ok. um. Mike wasn't technically graduating so...damn. He was in that group of bald men. This wasn't going to be easy.

The ceremony started and it was great. Lots of emotion and tears going on in the dimmed theater lights. I think most people were just so on the edge of exploding from the happiness of being so close to their Soldier. I know I was.

Ceremony ended and I passed the mom I saw earlier as she was going after her Mike who had gone back in the theater and I was going towards the barracks to see if I could find Mike.

Did I ever mention how many Mike's there were in this Platoon? Lots!

As we were standing there waiting for either him to find us or for everyone else to leave and he be the only one left...he ran past us. And all of a sudden I couldn't understand how I couldn't have found him before. He looks like...Mike. He's been bald before. He's even had a mohawk or 5. So I've seen him bald. For some reason I couldn't find him but now...here he was. He got back in with his Troop and we waited til they did what they had to do and he happened to see us waiting and nodded.

I have never been so happy as when I got to walk over and hug him and I tried really hard to not cry. Really. I did. I just started leaking a bit but I got it under control. He introduced me to others, who had leaking moms and dads, so it was obviously not embarrassing him. We met the Soldier we were adopting for the weekend and then I signed them both out and we were on our way.

Gotta go get some food on the stove...part 2 to follow momentarily...

Glad he got to call us :)

Got a letter from Mike telling me how happy he was to talk to me last time. He's sending me, what appears to be, last minute instructions for our trip up. I have a list of items I'm supposed to bring, all of which will be returning with me when we come home. He's asked me to get him a laptop so he can play some games. I'll grab one this week and install Crysis for him. I'm not sure what else he wants so that's all he's getting til we get there. Unless he calls again.

He wants game news. I'm going to print some stuff out but I remember someone saying they couldn't have printed pages from the web...I'm not going to hand write 6 pages of technical details on games so...he's getting it printed right from wikipedia.com. I guess I'll find out if that is ok or not, won't I? ;)

He's going nuts for news...anything on new games, new movies, new music. He wants to see Batman, maybe I can see if it's playing at a discount movie when we are there, as I'm pretty sure it won't be in the regular theaters still on October 3.

He's all fired up about the new Challenger. I guess someone got pics or something, he's practically drooling about this cars specs. I'm going to create some note paper, to write to him, using the images I downloaded from the Dodge site.

He also got to shoot a rocket launcher and claymore mines. He sounds happy about getting a couple of pounds of C4 next week and getting to blow up whatever they want on the course. Sounds like fun.

He had to go because his DS was chasing them and shooting rubber bands at them from a "rolly chair"...He's always indicated that his troop is great and I'm guessing they all get along fairly well. That has to help a lot in this situation.

Ok, off to get girls in bed and then will catch up on the rest.

:)