"It's never too late to start your life over."

You know how it is, you're just minding your business, doing whatever it is you are doing and all the sudden, something catches your attention, be it a car, or a woman, or an airplane at 30,000 feet and BANG, you aren't doing what you were doing before, you are distracted by said shiny thing. Yea, welcome to my life.
"I'm not stupid, I'm easily distracted."

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

I'm back, but is this home?

So, I have to wonder what to call home. Most people of course don't have this issue. They call where they live every day, "Home." Simple enough I guess, but not really effective for me. After-all, I live in Iraq right now.

I could call my parents house "Home", I know that would please them, but I don't think it is accurate. I don't really have a room there anymore. My room is now a crafts room, mom has her loom in there. I'm just grateful that they still store some of my stuff and let me sleep there on occasion.

I could call my apartment back in Germany "Home". Also not accurate. Right now it is just an empty apartment that is really just serving as an expensive storage room for my bikes and furniture. Doesn't really sound like a home to me.

So that leaves just one place. Here. I guess this is "Home". Such is the life of a Soldier that we have to call some pretty nasty places home. This one is mine I guess.

I got "Home" yesterday afternoon. I was exhausted but I went to work anyway. I couldn't get any sleep or I would have been up all night. You need to get the jet lag out of the way as fast as possible and this is one, albeit painful, way to do it.

An almost uneventful trip. I am telling people that I didn't intend to come back here, that I simply went to the airport in order to cash in my airplane ticket for some money to go on the run with. Unfortunately, there was a line, so I stood in it. Yea, next thing I knew I was on an airplane back to Kuwait. Damnit! Mostly not true, but I'm not telling you which part.

I left my sister's house at 7AM on Tuesday and I got into Kuwait at about 10PM on Wednesday. I then had to be back at the terminal for a flight manifest call at 3 AM on Thursday. Unfortunately a sandstorm of near biblical proportions kicked up around, well 2:59 AM. The flight was not canceled. Unfortunately, they didn't know when the storm would clear so they simply kept telling us to come back in 45 minutes for more info and to not go very far. They gave me a tent in which I managed a stunning 1.5 hours of horzontal sleep, my first real sleep since I woke up at my sisters house at 6AM on Tuesday. Unfortunately with updates every 45 minutes there wasn't really an opportunity to go back there and get any more sleep. I mean really, 10 minute walk each way, 5 minutes to stumble around and look for an open bunk (you only make that mistake once) and then 5-10 minutes to fall asleep. You do the math, that leaves you with like... 23 seconds of sleep. It just ain't worth it.

I did manage a few minutes of sleep here and there on the chairs in the waiting area with my head comfortably perched on a paperback. I was so tired that I think I read the same page of my book for about 30 straight minutes. The cool thing is that I kept getting a new meaning out of the page every time I read it. Oh yea, hallucinations are fun too...

The flight finally left Kuwait at about 11AM and I got into Baghdad about 1PM. My guys were so happy to see me that the normal 30 minute drive across the base to get to the airport took the guy coming to get me about 6 minutes. (Please remember that I was still hallucinating here.) As soon as I got in, by deputy handed me my 9mm and loudly proclaimed that since I had the pistol, I had to go to all the meetings from here on out. So much for easing back into it.

At 5AM this morning, after only 6 hours of sleep I was wide awake and staring at the ceiling. I guess this makes sense, that was about 9PM back in the states, I think my body was craving Troegs beer, and 9PM seems the logical time to wake up and drink it. Whatever the reason, there was no going back to sleep, so I got up, got some breakfast and came in to work. Great fun.

I guess the bottom line is that I am back at home and safe. This isn't much of a home, but fortunately I can see the light at then end of the tunnel and I am looking forward to starting a new one as soon as I can leave this one.