Stuck In The Sand

Well, since I still have to go back to post a couple of times to finish up various odds and ends, I was going to keep this blog going until all that was done. But I've changed my mind. I'm mentally already completely out of all that, as of a few days ago I'm officially off active duty too, and, well, it'd be just little stuff anyway, so I'll include it in my new blog.

So if you like, follow me into the wide, wide world via And Then. . .

Thanks for reading along through the last 3 years of barely-military life, and the messages of support and interest.

Current Mood: good

Things are gradually drawing to a close. I reported to my new Guard unit, which appears to include several people from the unit I was sent out to the desert with the first year we were there, and got some paperwork done, including working out when I have to come to drill next. I'm going on a long trip that'll interfere with the drill schedule later, too, so we discussed how/when to make up those days. If this all works out right, I'll only have to go to five drill weekends before my time is up.

I'm still catching up on other paperwork, though, like turning in travel vouchers for the cost of the travel (parking at the airport, driving to the airport from here) and claiming my 180-day continued medical coverage. I have an uncomfortable feeling there's more paperwork I have to do sometime today because this is the last day I'm on Active Duty orders, and I vaguely think there were things that had to be filed while still on Active Duty. Ummmm. Next week I'll go back up to post to pick up other papers, make sure other travel vouchers were turned in, and see what's being done about the awards for the people who got cheated out of theirs. One of our Guard soldiers who is staying has said that he will put them in for awards on the Guard side (he knows how!) if the Active Army doesn't fix it, so I'll go talk to him if I don't get a good answer out of the First Sergeant.

Plans for the next few months are complicated, including living arrangements. But it's all good, and will sort out eventually. I think I will keep blogging, but not many more times under this account, as this blog has been for a specific set of circumstances that are drawing to a close. I'll let you know.

Current Mood: optimistic
Current Music: Don't Cry For Me, Argentina -- Evita s/t

Now that particular 3-ring circus is over. We drove around doing all the required odds and ends: reading the PPD skin tests for those who had them, copying more papers, sitting through some final briefings, and finally getting our flights confirmed and changing back into civilian clothes. Yesterday morning I took the 4 who are staying on med-hold (they decided to keep one more) to hand them over for their new unit while they get processed for that, though one of them called me last night and said all of them should be leaving in about 2 weeks. The Army has a program called "Community Based Healthcare... something" which basically means that, should the soldier wish it, if their care will take longer than 60 days, they may continue it in their own home community through the military or VA medical facilities available there. This apparently developed in response to some people who were kept in Army hospitals far from home for over a year just because they needed physical therapy. So that's what they're all qualifying for, as their problems cannot be fixed within 60 days, and they are all pleased.

Then there's the one who wants to go on Active duty, poor sausage. He says it will take about 2 weeks to put through the packet. He is already a qualified and experienced medic, so he will probably have his choice of duty assignments, especially since nobody wants to go to the post we were just on, so there should be no problem getting that. We all think he's a bit loony, but a man is free to make his own decisions.

The remaining five flew together from El Paso to Phoenix to Ontario, there to finally say goodbye after 3 years of working and living together. They are all people I like (as were the medics who stayed behind in TX), so it was a bit difficult. I felt like I was watching one of those sitcoms where the high school friends all go to different colleges. We have exchanged contact information, including our non-Army email accounts, and hope to see each other again. Some of them are now also in the same unit I am, so in a few months we will see each other periodically, at least until I get out in July.

We all have 90 days from the date our orders end to start our monthly drills again. Since everyone had differing amounts of leave left over, we all have different order end dates as they added those to the day we demobilized. I only had 4 days left, having taken a week or two here or there as the years progressed, but others have over a month. We get paid as though we were still on duty until those orders end, so that extra "free" month's pay is very welcome to them. I don't regret taking the leave, though: I needed the time away, and it gave me the chance to do some fun stuff (or even just hide from the world among the trees).

Today we're supposed to call our Guard units and tell them we're back and see if they want us to come by in person to do whatever. I'll do that in a little bit. First I want to get some real food. So good to realize my options are more than Burger King, Popeye's, Taco Bell Express, and overcooked chowhall food!

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: Joy To The World -- Three Dog Night

... and still in Texas, on a borrowed computer. Fort Bliss is what our post could have been if it had cared a little more, although otherwise there are very many similarities. Including the fact that the National Guard are housed in substandard buildings and expected to clean it up for the next set of soldiers to move in there. Which is why I'm paying about $40 a night to stay in the lodging, where I have a TV, my own bathroom, and clean sheets. I won't be reimbursed because the government, in its infinite kindness, has provided quarters for me in those substandard rooms, with the other 3 women who came out here as part of my group (1 of them is not a medic and thus unknown to us; there is also one non-medic male soldier). The first room they gave us had no air conditioning, the fridge was filled with puddles of black mold, it and the microwave don't work, and the bathroom was grimy in the extreme. So I went and demanded another, which is at least only dirty. They seemed surprised we needed bedding (who flies from California with bedding?!) and signed us out each a pillow, two sheets, a pillowcase, and a wool blanket, most of which seemed clean, although the pillows appear to have been put through a shredder. They lent us a van, which the medic who has been acting as a driver and I used to explore the post a bit, thus finding the lodging. He was going to get a room, too, but since he will be held here for medical clearance, he decided to wait until he got his new quarters and save his money for that boring time after we leave.

Of our group of ten, three are staying on "med-hold" and one is changing over to the active duty army permanently (and plans to request the same post we've been on, which we find hysterical: they didn't find him good enough to allow him to stay another year as a Guard soldier, so we'd love to see their faces when he comes back as one of their own). The remaining 5 of us will be leaving here soon. It has been a very very inefficient system: five days to do what could be easily done in three -- or even two, if they accepted everything we spent the last week doing on our post. It's a good thing we have the van, and that I have my own room to retreat to. We will fly back to LA from El Paso via Phoenix, which is by far the fastest way among all the alternatives, but that doesn't surprise me any more.

The last week on post was hell. Usually 10 working days are allotted to clearing the post and the unit; we got five. Before and after each working day's running around different offices to each "station" on our checkout sheet, I stayed up to pack and clean, averaging 3 hours of sleep per night. At nearly every station, something was wrong that someone had to fix although it was all supposedly correct. I kept having to dash to my room to find a paper or other proof of something or other. Due to my rank, I was made the leader of the 11 people due to come out here to demobilize (one stayed behind due to a family emergency). That meant that in between all my own frantic dashing, I kept having to pull over or aside to answer the phone to get or pass info to one of the others. AND pack. I had already done what I thought was almost everything, but darn that highly efficient storage in my own room, I found so much more. If my friend Mark had not lent me his Suburban to shove everything into until driving it to the storage in the evening, I wouldn't have made it. As it is, a couple of us managed to sign out and clear within 5 minutes of everything closing down. And I barely made it out of the storage facility before they locked the gate, as well. Phoooo!

One extremely unpleasant part of all this was the Commander's Call on that Thursday. We had been told that we no longer needed to participate in the unit's reindeer games since we were clearing, but then got messages that we were expected to be there for this in order to get our awards. Not only are people given awards when they do something special in particular, but when they leave a post there are certain automatic awards, plus it's a chance to put through whatever else has not been done earlier. We were all expecting "the usual" that is given under these circumstances. I got a rather good one (though not the extremely good one I had been put in for) and another medic got the next one down, and... that was it. All of us got a play "Medical Order of the Mojave" pretend award that basically comes to a "thank you for playing in the desert" thing. The others were completely left out of any recognition of the hard work and dedication they have shown, usually well above and beyond what our Active duty colleagues bothered to do. We gave up 3 precious hours of our clearing time to get a nice public slap in the face for almost 3 years of faithful service. It was the last stroke that soured us all on the Army and its treatment of the National Guard. Our presence and hard work has saved them -- they won't even recognize that publicly, although privately individuals have been bemoaning our leaving and how much harder they will have to work. It's like that scene in "Blazing Saddles" where the Black sheriff gets thanked by the old lady, in private, who adds that she expects him to have the good taste not to mention that in public.

Gee, thanks for nothin'. The heck with you and good luck trying to do your own jobs without us.

One of the higher ranking Guard soldiers to stay was so incensed by this that he went the next day to find out why they got nothing, and was told that they were all "flagged" due to their inability to meet height/weight or PT standards. Now, most (but not all) of them have struggled with these issues; two have medical reasons, one is badly broken and will never run again (one of the ones staying here for med hold), but none of them got a "flag" which disqualifies the recipient from any favorable actions, including awards. There is a process to flagging someone that requires signatures and counselings and official notices, and nobody had got this.

Our First Sergeant, who used to be our E/D boss, has been at a military school all month and completely out of the loop on this. As it happens, his school was at the same post we're coming to for demob, so we waited until we saw him to jump on him for this. He is livid. Apparently none of us are supposed to be flagged; if they did it, they didn't tell anyone, and none of us qualifies for a flag. One has never had any disciplinary or weight issues, so just what he is flagged for is anyone's guess. We asked for copies of the flags while we were on post but nobody seemed to be able to find them.

Our new E/D boss spent so much time complaining about having to write our awards that I know hearing that some recipients were supposedly disqualified was good enough for him: he was too relieved about having less work to do that he would certainly not bother to look into it more closely and find out what was really going on. He also would have had to do more writing for my higher award, which he was obviously unwilling to do, so mine got downgraded, but I'm not nearly as mad about that as I am about the others getting nothing. Whatever other issues there may have been, all of us who are leaving (willingly or not) have worked our hind ends off for this command, and deserve far better. Thanks in part to our efforts, our hospital got the highest Joint Commission rating of any military hospital in spite of our great shortcomings in personnel and funding, higher than they got the last time they got inspected (with no Guard or Reserve soldiers there at that time).

The hospital commander and Command Sergeant Major also appear to dislike the Guard, in spite of needing us. Every time there is an extra day off to be awarded for something, one or the other will say "this does not apply to the National Guard and Reserve soldiers" (many of the nurses were Reservists) although we work the same schedules the others do, and although they each say nice things to us individually in the hallways. The previous commander, COL Eskew, and his CSM Sloan, who unfortunately both left at nearly the same time about a year ago, were very different, and made each medic and nurse, Guard, Reserve, or Active, from lowest ranking to boss, feel that they were needed and appreciated and made us all want to do even better to please them. Many stayed this last year out of personal loyalty to that COL and CSM (and the man who was our boss, in the case of the E/D personnel). The new command inspires no such loyalty. They have never come to the soldiers but to criticize and punish; good deeds are largely unrecognized, while Article 15s and other disciplinary actions are meted out for quite minor issues. We are too old for this nonsense.

Well, one way or another, it's almost over. We have cleared that post while retaining our right to continue to take our certification classes for free, and for almost all of us the income has been good enough to put us in a better financial situation than when we started. Some of us (including me) have found a new vocation through our service here, and we have met and worked with some great people among all the dross. Our First Sergeant may be able to fix the awards fiasco for the others, although they won't be publicly recognized for their efforts. The treatment we have received at the end especially has made it very easy for most of us to decline to stay any longer, even when asked to do so repeatedly, with no qualms of conscience.

And now I think I need to do my homework, since that is what I borrowed this laptop to do.

Current Mood: drained
Current Music: El Paso -- Marty Robbins

Evening falls, and the little bats are out. I was looking at the darkening sky and suddenly one was flitting by. Then another. Then a dragonfly. Then another bat, and another. They are quite small: their wingspan is about my hand spread out, and their bodies are scarcely longer than my middle finger. I like them -- watching them in the twilight seems so cozy.

We started to "clear" the post today. That means we have a list of places we have to go, where someone will sign off on our list if we have nothing outstanding to them: debts, equipment, library books. We also have a similar list for the medical company. Today most of us managed to clear almost the whole post list; tomorrow we'll start on the company. It doesn't matter if we're done early with this: we don't "final out" until Friday, which is actually all right because it gives me more time to clear out my quarters. I'm now down to about what most people have, in total. My storage cage has a stack of boxes and containers in it, and they'll go down to the storage place I have in town on Wednesday. Tomorrow morning I'll make my last smoothie and then give my blender and carafe to the same medic who has the rest of my unwanted kitchenware. He'll get my little cutting board too, and the Belgian ales I found in the back of my shelves, and the remainder of my spices. Then there's a box going to the post thrift store. So it's not all coming back with me... although it feels like it.

I wore my uniform all day today, which I haven't done in a while. What a relief to take it off again this afternoon. It doesn't feel normal any more. I especially dislike wearing the boots and blousers and long socks, and my poor calves show the marks from all three.

Tomorrow I'll also get my last haircut on this post, and in the afternoon I'll have that cavity filled that the dentist found during my dental exam. Today I caved in and finally bought the new Army uniform, the digital-patterned ACUs. I don't like them and I want my BDUs but they're not authorized for wear after next month any more. Theoretically, my unit will provide me with two sets, but knowing how these things go, I bought one set, with all the patches etc. I don't think they look like proper uniforms, I don't like the velcro all over, everyone who's had them complains that they fall apart after 6 months, and I resent having had to spend $170 on the kit and kaboodle (not including boonie hat). But the Army didn't ask me for my opinion. Again.

Oh well -- one week of reindeer games here, then another in Texas, and then I can go back to what the rest of the world considers normal.

Current Mood: blah
Current Music: One Of Our Submarines -- Thomas Dolby

The end is nigh! I went in to work for a few hours this morning, wearing the "On Call" uniform of department T-shirt and jeans since I really didn't want to put on my Army clothes. The network drive is finally operational again so I did my various reports, updated the schedule, and other administrative tasks. I'd picked up the plaques yesterday so I labelled them and put them on the head nurse's desk, and waited for her to review the schedule. A few more changes, she told me to send out an announcement for next week's staff meeting / potluck dinner, and then we closed the door to her office and she vented and ranted and told me some of the stupidity she has to deal with from both the higher-ups and the medics. Poor thing. I really wouldn't want her job. I commiserated and made her laugh a little. She told me as long as I show my face around the hospital periodically, she's not too concerned with how much I actually work. It's nice to be recognized for all the earlier hard work and overtime I've put in -- and I sure need the time!

Yesterday I went for the dental exam they suddenly decided we had to have before today, and when they took my blood pressure on arrival, it was 153/104. Yeesh. That's almost the highest it's ever been, but it's not surprising. I had a headache (the 6th day at that point), was concerned about stuff going on back home, hadn't eaten yet, hadn't slept straight through the whole night in about a week and a half, hadn't started on the homework for either class for the week, and -- oh yeah! -- there's all the stuff that still has to be packed and organized and done and signed off and checked off and moved... in about a week and a half. So, uh-huh, I'm a leetle stressed. I hadn't been drawing a deep breath all day without focusing and doing so deliberately, and felt like a cloud was following me around, occasionally taking me by the throat. The dental tech took my BP again at the end of the encounter, and it was 154/113. The dentist, who knows me and where I work, looked at me in concern. "You going to follow this up at work?" he asked. I promised I would. "You're not gonna stroke out when you leave my office?" he asked. I promised I wouldn't. He let me go.

Later that day, reading about something completely unrelated, I fell asleep without planning to. I woke about an hour and a half later, so relaxed, no headache. . . It was amazing. I bet my BP was closer to what it should be by LONG shot, too, but I didn't want to go to the hospital to check.

Now I'm sitting here catching up on my own administrative stuff (making lists, balancing the bank account, writing a couple of long-delayed emails), with the clock radio next to me playing the sound of waves and small seabirds. Knowing my boss doesn't feel I need to come in the hours I should be working has made me feel less guilty about focusing on my own preparations (I was doing it anyway, just feeling the pangs of conscience) and that helps. So does paying ahead on some bills so that's fewer things to keep track of, and boxing up the leftover alcohol to give it to a lucky recipient. Now I'm going to do my homework.

Current Mood: calm
Current Music: Tempus Vernum -- Enya

Yup, as I suspected after the failure of my previous attempt to make popcorn, it was the low-burning-temperature fake butter that was at fault. I finally gave it another try with the extra light flavored olive oil that I use for most of my cooking, and it turned out great. So here's how to do it.

1. Pour enough oil into your pan to cover the whole bottom, but not deeply.
2. Turn heat to medium, lowering it if it starts to smoke before the popcorn has popped.
3. Drop in a single popcorn kernel and wait for it to pop.
4. When it does, pour in enough popcorn to cover the bottom of your pan only one layer deep. Shake to coat kernels with oil and distribute evenly.
5. When all the corn seems to have popped, and/or the pan is full, take it off the heat. Pour into a large bowl, sprinkle with 1 tsp salt and 2 Tablespoons sugar (for a regular saucepan's worth of popcorn) or other seasonings (garlic salt is also good) and toss lightly.

If you do this in a pan with a glass lid, it's lots of fun to watch, as the kernels ricochet around the pan and then magically turn into white puffs. When I made popcorn as a child, I always wanted to leave the lid off so I could see the corn pop (and fly around the kitchen) but I knew my mother would really, truly kill me so I never dared. This is the next best thing.

So September, aka "the final month", has begun. What an odd feeling. (Except when I look around at all that remains to be packed and moved, at which point it slides smoothly into a panicked feeling.)

I went in to work today, but the network drive on which almost everything is stored is still not up. It's crippling. As it happened, shortly after I got there, they had a transport, and since the cell phone towers are also down, they couldn't reach the On Call medic to cover down, so I stayed at the front desk most of the day. He lives on post, and we sent someone to bang on his door about lunchtime, but both the exterior doors to his building were locked, so that did no good. Oh well, 's okay. Wasn't crazy today -- because of the long weekend, it was like during summer leave: slow and steady. There've been some exciting moments at night, though: apparently those who didn't escape post, entertained themselves by getting drunk and getting into fights. There was also one snakebite, which was just stupid of the soldier. It doesn't matter if you don't know whether that snake is poisonous: if you can't identify it otherwise for sure, just stay away from it.

I was going to work on my Psych 1 homework while I was sitting up there, but most of the time there was just enough going on that I couldn't focus. The assignments for each week are due by midnight on the Sunday, so once again, and uncharactaristically, for me, I'd left it till almost the last minute (though this week I'd done the other class' assignments already). But I managed: I finished almost an hour ago. Now I'm trying to decide if I'm going to take my tired, headachey self off to sleep, or start on next week's chapter while I'm still at least a bit awake.

Current Mood: lethargic
Current Music: Hymn to Avalokiteshvara -- Tibetan Monks

OMIGOSH. Amazing to think that I came here, almost 3 years ago, with one Army duffel, and one of my own stuff (civilian clothes, toiletries, meds, iPod) and that was all. I'm leaving here with the contents of a pretty well supplied studio apartment, minus major furniture items.

A couple of us have just spent the last couple of days packing and moving an incredible mountain of stuff (then I came home, fell into a coma, and woke up a little bit ago, my mind frantically making lists, so I got up to deal with it so I can go back to sleep). And there's still more stuff left to pack out! ACK!! Most of the food will be trucked in to the E/D and abandoned on the break room table for the scavengers to take home, as will the microwave and assorted other housewares. But still... jimini Christmas -- there's a LOT.

In the middle of all this, two disruptions: yesterday afternoon, a 100% urinalysis for the entire medical company. We were supposed to go in uniform, but I was darn ornery: not only was it my day off, it was one of the 2 days specifically granted off work to move things off post! I came back directly from picking up the truck in town, we parked it in the clinic lot within sight of the CSM, and I went to pee wearing a skirt and bright red clogs. Then this morning was a mass casualty drill. I explained to the company commander about moving, and promised to stay within telephone reach, and she let me go, which was nice of her. Then again, when you work in the ER, whether it's a real mass casualty incident or a practice one, your job will be to work in the ER. You don't go anywhere else, you don't get involved with anything or anyone that is not at the highest level of medical need . . . basically, you don't do anything different from what you'd do the rest of the time, so doing the drills is essentially pointless for us. Plus we keep getting the usual patients whether there's a drill or emergency or not, so we can't focus on just the drill anyhow. Still, she could have insisted I stay, and I'm glad she didn't.

Current Mood: stressed
Current Music: The fridge humming REALLY LOUDLY

We shrink from change; yet is there anything that can come into being without it? What does nature hold dearer, or more proper to herself? Could you have a hot bath unless the firewood underwent some change? Could you be nourished if the food suffered no change? Is it possible for any useful thing to be achieved without change? Do you not see, then, that change in yourself is of the same order, and no less necessary to Nature?

Preparing to leave here soon, I'm running around in increasingly frantic circles. There is so much to pack, to organize, to do! I'm going to be putting almost everything I have here into storage in the little town just off post, then work on transferring what I need to where I'll be living after the whole demobilization is done, as otherwise I don't think there will be enough time. I'm making lists, sometimes with dates, on every little piece of paper that happens to be at hand.

Nobody has given us clear directions, and we all have lots of questions. When do we vacate the rooms we live in on post? Where do we live after that, and before we fly out? When do we fly back? Do we come back to post, or go back to the real world? When do we have to report to our "home" units? Are we supposed to go there all together? Do we have to be in uniform? How do we get to and from the airport? Where do we go after that? Does our health coverage continue after the date we leave here? Will we get copies of our records? How does everything get back to our home units? When do we get the awards that are being put in for us? What awards are being put in for us? Nobody seems to know.

Yesterday I went to the 2nd part of my exit physical, then went in to work. The main network drive was down! All the documents I needed to work on -- the monthly schedule, the document tracking overtime hours worked and On Call hours called in, the various instructions -- are on that drive. So I went and ordered the plaques the department gives to departing personnel. It felt a bit odd ordering my own, and I was tempted to have the inscription say something like "With our grateful thanks for single-handedly saving the Hospital from certain ruin by her heroic actions and amazing skills" but managed to resist and just request the same thing everybody else is getting. I also had to find enough unit crests and shiny pin-on rank for each plaque, so it wasn't as straightforward as it sounds, especially since both the unit supply sergeant and the military clothing shop were out of crests. I ended up shamelessly stealing 5 from a fellow medic, who had bought them for his uniform -- to make it worse, he's one of the ones leaving! Oh well, I guess that means he's getting one of them back [smile].

Our other task for the day was to work on a complete inspection of all of our vehicles and present the head nurse with a detailed report on all the shortcomings, but it was too hot to do that while the sun was out. (He had already been working on this while I went home for a few days, for my father's surgery.) So we worked on packing up our own stuff for a couple of hours while we waited for the heat to die down. After dinner, we returned to the E/D, bearing the first of several loads of canned and frozen goods to be donated to the community rather than packed, and got started. (The network drive was still down.) We ended up working until after 4:00 this morning, having earned a couple of days off to focus on packing up.

I spent most of today asleep, but now I think I will start on this week's homework for my two online classes, so I am not desperately trying to finish them at 2:30 am of the morning they're due again.

Oh, I almost forgot: there was a total lunar eclipse last night! Since the moon was unusually bright and completely full when it began, it was very dramatic -- and the first one I'd seen. All the night shift nurses and medics trooped out to look at it, amid jokes not to look directly...

Current Mood: drained
Current Music: Anxious -- The Housemartins

Fingerling and other tiny potatoes are in the markets now, and I love them! This is a simple and very yummy way to serve them.

Boil till tender. Drain. Drizzle on some basil oil (or other herb-infused oil you may like -- they sell them in most grocery stores if you don't want to make your own) and sprinkle with a little salt.

That's it. Very yummy.

If you do want to make infused oil, this is how I do it when I make rosemary oil (also very good on potatoes, or great with lamb): heat a mild-flavored oil gently -- do not bring to "frying" temperature. Drop in some sprigs of rosemary as you heat the oil. When it's quite warm, but not hot, take off the heat to cool, leaving sprigs. When cool, pour into bottle or small jar and put in fridge so it doesn't go rancid.

Recipe Source has other methods on this site (scroll down about halfway for instructions).

With our exit date looming so close, there is a lot to be done. I was at work during the day yesterday, because there is too much that cannot be done at night. I reworked the schedule for September several times: once based on what I knew, again based on what my boss knew but hadn't told me yet, and then the head nurse said she wanted it done completely differently from usual, and drew little matrices on a bit of scrap paper to explain what she meant. Basically, more days working, fewer days off, more medics on the floor each day. Apparently our patient load has gone up dramatically as the clinic is short-staffed, and this is a large group of training soldiers visiting us, and we have a large number of inexperienced medics working, so altogether it's been rough while I've been gone.

Honestly, it's going to be bad for them when we leave. Shorthanded, with most of the experienced medics leaving, and the only experienced nurse right behind us ... I feel bad for my head nurse, who is such a good one.

Still no details on just how the complicated dance that is our demobilization will be choreographed, involving, as it does, this post, another in a different state, transportation to and fro, clearing out our stuff from this post, getting it to our "real" homes, checking in and out with our "home" units... Urk. But I am very happy at the thought of this being over and me being able to take the next step.

It will be SO nice not to have to do that 40-mile drive (at least) every time I need/want to do anything off that tiny post!

Current Mood: excited
Current Music: King of the Road -- any cover

• I'm on a few days' leave again. I read completely irrelevant fictional books. I saw more trees. I saw woodpeckers and bluejays and grey squirrels and little critters with long tails. I saw rainstorms and hailstones!
  
  
• Got a text message from one of my NG medic friends yesterday: we are clearing post on the 10th of next month and flying out to demob on the 16th!!! The end is in sight. Goodbye to uniforms, formations, having to wear a hat out of doors at all times... and a steady paycheck. [sigh] As Heinlein says, TANSTAAFL.
  
  
• With a sense of dancing on the edge of a precipice, I've started the first 2 online classes towards knocking out some of those nursing pre-requisites. I'm currently saying clever things on the web sites for Psychology 1 (Intro to general psych) and Philosophy 5/Religious Studies 10 (Comparative religion). The latter is definitely the more interesting course as of the end of Week 1, as well as more user-friendly. Helps that I found an electronic version of the book to download to my laptop.
  
  
• This weekend I'll be on a cruise on a WWII ship. A real one! With aerial attacks! And lunch.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: Ievan's Polka -- Loituma (it's mesmerizing! see YouTube)

I started to sit down and tap out another entry a couple of times in the last week, but -- you guessed it -- I was too tired. Now I'm still a little wired after all the coffee last night and the pleasure of catching up with someone from "home." My old platoon sergeant, who was an E-5 when I came to "my" unit as an E-4 (in other words, he was only one rank above me), is out here with his civilian job for a little while, and after getting off work I met him for breakfast at the bowling alley.

We ran into the First Sergeant there, and ol' "Plat Daddy" (as they apparently called them back in 'Nam days) got caught up on the inner workings of the hospital a little more than I think he really cared to be, but he followed along gamely. He's now the same rank as the First Sergeant, without the command position, and two above me, and the two men had both served in the same theater though several years apart, and my 1SG was in the reserves for a short while, so he knows what that's like, while Plat Daddy was on active duty before coming over to the Guard, so he knows what that's like, and they weren't entirely alien to each other. These two men are among the ones I respect most highly, and if it wasn't for each of them I wouldn't have stayed with that unit as long as I did. The man who was Plat Daddy's and my 1SG back in our "home" unit in the good old days was the only other 1SG I've had such high respect for, and between these two I've felt their lack sorely while serving with other men who held that position (I happen not to have had a female 1SG, though it happens).

After 1SG went back to the office, Plat Daddy and I caught up a bit on each other's lives since deployments pulled us both out of our old grooves, and he updated me on what's happened to "our" unit since we both left it. A lot has changed. We had a good unit, very tight and very professional for a reserve unit and even better in many respects than much I've seen on the active side. We had a tight team (he was my team-mate, then team chief, for a long time) that had a few great years together before it started falling apart. Some left the military for health reasons, others got sent to other units and never came back, some retired. In the way of military units, it didn't stay in one configuration for long, and what remains of the organization is full of new names and new faces that mean nothing to us and to whom we mean nothing. You can't go home again. There's no there there. And it's sad, because it was good. We should have deployed somewhere crunchy together -- we were very close and worked together smoothly and looked out for one another. I'm glad I got a chance to be part of something like that, even if it never did get tested under fire. We're all still in touch, sending occasional emails and making phone calls out of the blue and even meeting every now and again, welcomed by each other's families. When I'm out in the real world again, I will be looking them up for sure. Once at drill, our supply sergeant, seeing me unusually alone, asked me where my "band of brothers" were, and I realized that was more than a glib joke. They really were like brothers to me and I miss them, and our team "family".

In other, less melancholy news: I'm wearing scrubs! Since I am no longer going out on runs unless things are desperate (I just hide behind the front counter and play with Excel), that removes the only opposition to wearing them, as a medic. I'd ordered a black set, a´ la the "angel of death" look my favorite nurse wears, and she says that's common in trauma units so that's fitting for me, too, since that's where I want to be as a nurse. They're SO much more comfortable, it's incredible! I wear my leather trainers with them, so if there's goo I can wipe it off, and without the tight banding of boots, blousing rubber, and high socks, my calves are so relaxed. I also look slimmer! Bonus! The other medics are all terribly jealous, but I have my Head Nurse's OK to do so. I show up in my On Call "uniform" of department t-shirt and jeans to check out the vehicles before the shift begins, then change, as the nurses arrive in civvies and change in the hospital.

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: Some Unholy War -- Amy Winehouse

I'm still feeling a bit out of it, although I didn't take any diphenhydramine (aka "Benadryl", sold with exactly the same amount of active ingredients as its anti-allergy packaging but at a higher price for what is essentially a side effect: making you sleepy and keeping you asleep). I've been asleep for most of the day, but I guess it's accumulated fatigue again. I had expected to have had last night off, and tonight, but got a call from a fellow medic who had not looked closely enough at the schedule to realize he was supposed to be working the night he had to take his wife, a fellow Guard soldier, to the airport. This place is 40 miles from the nearest small town and 2 hours from an airport, so taxi rides are not exactly an option, and they have only one car between them, so her driving there and leaving the car in the parking lot for the month she'll be in school is not exactly the best alternative either. He is one who also "plugs holes" in the schedule when required, and often works extra hours, and there was nobody but me who could cover for him, so I did.

Not that it was exactly work -- we had only 1 patient between 10:00 pm and 5:00 am, and not only did I catch up on all my paperwork, but I watched A Midsummer Night's Dream (the 1999 version, with Stanley Tucci and Michelle Pfeiffer and Kevin Bacon) and part of Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels in between lots of chatting with the equally bored nurses, but still it meant that I could not use the preceding day as I had planned, to get my hair cut and laundry done and buy groceries, as I had to sleep in order to be awake at night. When I got off work this morning I went to see what I could do, but because it's still the tag end of the post's summer leave, nothing would open until 1100 and I just could not stay awake and competent that long. Now I'm awake, though loopy, but everything is closed again, so that's no good. I'll have to try tomorrow, then go to sleep for the remainder of the day so I can work the night, and the next.

Ten shifts in August -- I'm taking some leave so there are fewer than usual -- and then we hope to get news of when exactly we are demobilizing. There's about a 6 week window, which makes it difficult to make concrete plans. In the meantime, the time off later this month will be used to begin packing this mountain of stuff I have acquired here, and begin shuttling it down to storage off post. I feel like I'm in that computer game, Katamari Damacy, where the little character rolls around a ball of stuff that picks up more and more from everything around it until it's the size of a planet.

Current Mood: sleepy

Made up in the quest to add more fresh roughage to my diet:

Alternate handfuls of bean sprouts and shredded carrots. Toss with Asian citrus-sesame ("goma yuzu") dressing. Chow down. Also good to pack for lunch: you can dribble on the dressing and it trickles down during the day.

Unbelievably irritating: woke up at 1330 (1:30 pm) and couldn't really fall back asleep. Just like yesterday. A little dozing, a lot of tossing and turning, and I even tried getting out of bed and reading for a bit, but no go. With less than 4 hours left till the alarm would go off, I didn't dare take anything to help me sleep, as then I may not wake up in time. Bah! So I finally gave up, about half an hour before my alarm would have gone off anyway, and got up to vacuum the nasty corners of the kitchenette. I resent having ants bite me while I wash my dishes just because I'm standing in their crumbs.

Maybe tonight will be like last night's though: only 2 patients, both before 2200 hrs, then 2 more just before change of shift. With the permanent party soldiers of the post almost all gone on their summer leave, we are enjoying the break, too: fewer should have gone to sick call visits from the soldiers, and fewer my kid has a fever from their families. Ordinarily, we'd cut down to minimum staffing, but since we already are on minimum staffing, there's not change.

Well, there is change on the schedule, just not due to summer leave. We have had 2 people pulled out of the department, one shift leader and our new boss, so we have had to scramble to fill in the gaps and some of our new soldiers will begin shift work earlier than we usually do that, but there is nobody else to cover. And we already got the first couple of waves of additional taskings that we have had to allot people to do, like the guard, which, fortunately, only draws 3 people from the ER this month, and funeral detail, though, fortunately, again, the only one left before the next department picks it up next month is in the nearby town, so the two people who will be present for that don't have to drive far.

Well, I guess I'll go shower and put on my uniform. Lunch is already packed. Wish me an uneventful shift! (I've packed the Coke Blak to keep me awake.)

Current Mood: grumpy
Current Music: Who Needs Sleep? -- Barenaked Ladies

Not the kind of publicity we can be proud of, I'm afraid.

• July 25th
• July 23rd
• July 18th

I do agree with the Colonel that it's not a trend: I think a fairly constant level of abuse goes on all the time, as on other military posts, and we've just had a sudden rash of noticeable ones. The children from the pool, for instance, would probably not have drawn nearly as much attention if it were not swimming weather, just because the bruises would have been covered up by more clothing.

Take it that you have died today, and your life's story is ended; and henceforward regard what further time may be given you as an uncovenanted surplus, and live it out in harmony with nature.