Serve me up a piece of that humble pie

So maybe I was both a little hormonal and a little distanced from Jack as I wrote the last entry. For his being gone a month, I guess a little anger, frustration, and emotional release could be considered healthy. To his credit, he responded to my little request sent out to the e-universe in the last entry. I asked him to show me that we were going to be okay, that we were going to get through this overseas deployment to Afghanistan. This is what I found in my inbox Sunday morning:

Hi Lady!!

I MISSS YOUUUUUU!!!

I haven’t talked to you in DAYS!  You work too hard. *pouts*

But anyways, I love you!  I’ve been pretty busy lately as well, been doing a fair bit of flying.  Things are picking up, we’re still sorting out the flight planning stuff and such though.  A buddy of mine who flies Hercs has shown up in camp though, so that’s pretty cool.  Haven’t seen him in a while so it’ll be good to catch up with him over some Timmies 🙂 
I didn’t get a chance to go to the bazaar yesterday because it was closed.  The marketplace was flooded out from the crazy amount of water we’ve been getting lately.  Whoda thunk I’d come to a desert and it’d be wet and cold?! 
I had the biggest fiasco yesterday to wash my sheets, instead of sending them through the million-degree washer that the normal laundry service uses, I figured I’d do them in the small washers that are provided.  Boy was that a poor choice.  2 hours to wash, and 2.5 hours to dry.  And the machines were TINY, like you could barely get 2 sheets and the pillowcases in one washer!  Madness…
So anyways, I was thinking of you (as usual) and got into starting a list of things that I miss about you, but I’m not going to tell you them all at once, so I think what I’m going to do is every time we talk I’m going to tell you a new thing that I miss, and I’ll try not to duplicate ones.  Little surprises for ya you know 😉
Did you get a chance to go to Michael Hill and meet Natalie?

Talk to you soon schweetie!

I miss your smile 🙂

Love, ME!

Aw. So maybe I just need to learn a little humility and patience? I mean, I did ask for more contact on Thursday and this came on Sunday, and I was at work for 12 hours a day, with his days being opposite my nights- so maybe I just need to relax a little and realize that were I around in person, he and I would see each other, speak to one another, talk to one another and maybe take that immediate gratification for granted… It turns out that the previous internet service he used was of a slower download speed and didn’t allow offline MSN messaging- so he paid $30/month more so that he can get more speed, and now he occasionally leaves me offline messages, which is nice.

We had a long chat about the facebook picture that was posted. It was posted under a friend’s name, but I didn’t see that when I was viewing it at work as I was using a site blocker and I just commented on a picture and didn’t think of the poster’s name. Jack said he was sorry I had to see that, that there are things he knows his family can handle about the dangers of him being there but that there is no need to inflate that already real, tangible fear by posting pictures of minefields. I conceeded that maybe I was asking too much, but that for now, I really didn’t want to see images of war without having him either there next to me to provide context, or at least speaking with me on MSN or the satellite phone (30minutes per week only). I said its like a negotiation of sorts- I am there for him, but I also need him to be there for me. If there is something bothering him, he sometimes can’t talk to me (military professional conduct rules) and I understand that, and that the 6 months or so when he returns will likely be a big information dump on his part of the things he maybe witnesses but doesn’t fully process.

I heard yesterday through another MGF that her man is thinking of returning to Afghanistan in Sept 2009 for a 9 month tour. She asked him through MSN if any other men were thinking of doing the same volunteer tour. "Yeah, Kent, JACK…" Now, I know it is early into the mission and that he is having an exciting time doing lots of flying. I know this ‘opportunity’ to get experience ‘in theatre’ won’t be around forever (I think the conservatives are withdrawing our forces in 2011) but I also have to wonder about the other sphere that is his life here. The getting a puppy, going on outdoor vacations, building a family side of his life. Can that really move forward with any sort of normalcy if he is gone Jan – May and then leaves again in Sept for 9 months?

I just don’t know where his head is right now, even if he tells me where his heart is.

There is nothing easy about loving a soldier, and yet what choice do I have? All the tears I have cried in the past month, compared to the tears I didn’t cry, but the laugher we’ve shared over the past five years… how can I not want to have him here, with me, and not there, with them…

He risks so much. We risk so much. I can’t know yet, but I hope it is worth the risk.

F Girl