Answering a few more FAQs

As another weekend draws to a close, I thought I'd take a few minutes to answer a couple of frequently asked questions from the past week.

1) No, I am not going to "kill" Eddy when he gets back. I'm not going to kick his a-s or anything else. If he truly volunteered to stay with the connex, then he has been punished enough. If he was ordered to stay, why should I get mad? That's the thing about the army. Someone gives you an order and, as long as it's not unlawful, you follow that order. I wouldn't be so good about it; but, then again, there is a reason that, even with the temptation of the Defense Language Institute, I didn't join the military. And in hindsight, given the connex's disappearance in the staging yard in Balad, it looks like it was a good thing that he did stay.

2) The second is a little more complicated. A number of people have asked how we can do this. We just can. What else are we going to do? There is no point in yelling about it. Who are we going to yell at? Each other? That's not going to help. The walls? They can't do much. The army or the Bush administration? Come on, there are far more egregious issues over which to take them to task.

Perhaps, without realizing it, we have achieved that elusive goal articulated by Reinhold Neibuhr and Alcoholics Anonymous, "the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference." Or, perhaps after sixteen years together, we've finally figured out how to deal with tough times in our relationship - good communication and a sense of humor. It has been easier to deal with this prolongation since Ed discovered the DSN line about 10 days ago (note to his family - the DSN line only allows him to call 503 area codes. That's why I've been getting all the calls.)

That's not to say this has been fun. Funny, in a surreal, theater of the absurd sort of way. But not fun. Ed swears that one day, we'll look back and this and "laugh, laugh." We'll see. But truthfully, even now, it's not that bad.

Because, the thing is, he is coming home. He is coming home alive. He is coming home with all of his limbs, and without multiple concussions or a traumatic brain injury from IEDs. What is a two week delay, if that the worst that we have to deal with? And it does look like it will only be a two-week delay.

I spoke to Ed this morning. Despite a last minute problem with the connex that took about six hours to solve, he has now handed it over to someone in Kuwait. That person is now responsible for holding the connex's hand and making sure it gets on the boat ok.

All Ed needs now is a flight home. He is flying what is known as Space-A (i.e. he gets to go when there is space available). He had to be up (or still awake) at 2:00 A.M. Monday morning, Kuwait time, (4:00 P.M Sunday afternoon PST) to see if there was space on the Monday morning flight. If he could get on the flight, he would have to go right away. If not, he'd let me know. That is, if I did not hear from him by 4:30 P.M., I could assume that he had gotten a spot on the plane and was on his way home.

It's now 10:30 P.M. I have received no email or phone calls letting me know that he couldn't get on the flight.

If all has gone well, he will be back in the states by tomorrow evening.