I’m tired.

I’m tired.

I’m tired of being heckled in line at the grocery store because I’m wearing my Air Force shirt. I’m tired of people judging me because I tell them I’m in the military. I’m tired of having to defend what I do to my “friends”. I’m tired of feeling like an outcast because I signed up to do something that most Americans (98%) never either get the opportunity to do or fail out of once they decide to do it. I’m tired of being boycotted by my fellow countrymen simply for the reason that they don’t know what they believe in, they just know that what I do is not what they believe in. I’m tired of people who can’t defend their beliefs, either with words or actions. I’m tired of people who buy into the idea that the travesty we’re involved with in Iraq and Afghanistan is somehow the worst thing that’s ever happened to America. I’m tired of feeling like I somehow “sold out” simply because I signed on the dotted line. I’m tired of dealing with companies that sell themselves by having “veteran” or “G.I.” in their title.

I’m tired.

I’m tired because I feel like I have a better understanding than most of what really happens in Iraq and Afghanistan every day. People die. Iraqi people. Afghan people. American people. Canadian people. British people. That’s the reality of it. There’s no such thing as an atrocity of war. War itself is an atrocity.

I’m tired of defending myself among the very people I signed up to defend. My hippie friends in Oregon. My liberal friends in Texas. (Yes, they exist.) I’m tired of justifying myself among the very people that have taken the same oath I have taken to defend this country from all enemies, foreign and domestic.

I’m tired living on poverty wages while the independent contractor who does the same job as me makes $86,000 a year. I’m tired of people thinking I make a lot of money. I’m tired of being treated like an outcast simply because I tell people that actual no-kidding good is being accomplished overseas as a direct result of our presence. Schools are being built. Poppy crops are being eradicated. Democratic process is being established.

I’m tired of people’s worn-out, thread-bare retorts to this war. People that have no business talking about it. People that don’t deploy to Iraq. People that don’t wander the poppy fields of Afghanistan. People that, thanks to the liberal media, think that tens of thousands of American military members have been killed since 9/11.

Most of all, I’m tired of the people that believe that I can’t justify the fact that I’m in the military along with believing that God has a better ideal for this broken world. I’m tired of those people most of all.

I’m tired.

 

Home, redux

Well Nellie and I finally made it to Tucson, and after much drama, we even found a place to stay. Curse you, pets. I think we could probably take a cruise with all the money we’ve paid in pet deposits and fees. To somewhere nice too. Like Mexico. (That becomes funnier if you know that Tucson is like 60 miles from Mexico.) I oficially start work again in about 2 hours. It’s been wierd to have all this time off. I haven’t had this much free time since I bought a motorcycle and took off across the country for 6 weeks. Time off has been good though. Nellie and I got to see old friends, new friends, and family. We got to have some nice, drizzly, depressing Oregon weather. As soon as we left, Portland skyrocketed to 104 degrees, breaking all kinds of records, I’m sure.
We find out in the next few days if our next month will be spent in a hotel, or if the Air Force will actually decide to house us on base. Combine that with the miles of red tape involved with inprocessing, and my life is going to be pretty exciting for awhile. Hooray for things that you don’t really want to do.

 

Crazy times

In the last 24 hours, we've had 3 tornado warnings (actual tornados touching down within 5 miles of us) and nonstop severe thunderstorm warnings. Penny sized hail advisories too. Oh yeah, all this is happening with 90+ degree weather. I'm beginning to think I've found a place with a more unstable weather pattern than Oregon!

 

I’ve moved!

To all of you who used to read about me on BlogSpot, this is my new place of blog-residence. Please update your RSS feeds and bookmarks accordingly.

In other moving news, my assignment for a permanent duty station got changed. Nellie and I will now be going to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, AZ. If any of you know anything about the area, let me know.

 

Huh?

So, I'm still trying to figure this out. I used to live here:

Now, I live here:

Do you think I could plead insanity?

 

The blog lives!

Hello, blog. Sorry for the three month hiatus. I've been a little busy as of late, with boot camp and all. I'm sure you understand. I'd be willing to bet that you're not the most forgotton chunk of bytes on the web.
Life is much changed for me now. I wasn't sure that I would change that much just by going through basic. I was wrong. It challenged me on every level possible and broke me down in many ways, only to build up new things in their place. I look at people differently now. "Civilian life" is a strange concept to me, and I'm not quite sure that I actually lived it for the better part of 24 years. People close to me tell me that I look different, talk much differently and have a new world view. I hope they're right. You don't see change in yourself when it's a slow, gradual metamophosis. You just see yourself everyday as being you. You go to sleep on your smaller-than-single, hard as a rock, no pillow havin' bed and reflect on the day. You think about how much you suck at drill, or how much you hate pushups. You think about how much you detest hearing that stupid trumpet song every single freakin morning at 0445. Then, you think about how much longer this all lasts. First, 6 weeks seems like an eternity. Then, as you get used to the routine, it just becomes one day at a time, and you can always handle one day, because no matter how much that day sucks, it ends when the lights turn off. I will always remember what I was told by a 6th weeker the first day I was there: This doesn't get easier, you just get better at it. That turned out to be true. At the end of it all, when I stood on the bomb run dressed in my blues, surrounded by my flight, 500 other graduates, my instructors, and my family, I thought to myself "You know, I've gotten pretty good at this whole thing." I really thought I had their little system all figured out. I had arrived. I was mistaken.
Three days later, when I left that base and took a 9-hour bus trip to tech school, all those notions were eviscerated. It's the wierdest thing…you arrive at boot camp in your civies (civilian clothes) and everybody else is in their BDU's. You can't wait to get your BDU's because you stick out like a sore thumb and everybody yells at you. You get your BDU's the first week and then you see a class in their blues. Man, you can't wait to get your blues. They look so sharp and you know what blues mean: graduation. Finally, that last week, you get your blues. You're on top of the world. You're finally getting out of there, other classes are looking up to you like gods, you might even see your T.I. smile at you once. Then comes graduation. Proudest moment of your life. Or at least it should be on the top 3. You go through all the pomp and circumstance, your family cries, you get to go off base, the whole 9 yards. Then, 2 days later, you take a little trip. You're going to tech school…the promised land of sorts. You're pumped. You're heard all the rumors and strories and hope that half of them are true. You roll off that bus and…immediately start getting yelled at. You have terrible flashbacks to basic. You're in your blues and realize that nobody else is. You can't wait to get into your civies. Heck, you can't wait to get into your BDU's, just so you don't stick out like a sore thumb and have everybody yell at you. At tech school, everybody wears blues on Mondays, just so we don't forget how, I think. Other than that, if you're wearing your blues, it means you're in trouble and you're going to stand in front of the commander. Not fun stuff. So, you can see how they jack with your mind. Just about the time you think you've got things figured out, they slap you upside the head and laugh at you as you stumble around like a dizzy blindfolded kid swinging at a pinata.
So I've sort of settled into another routine here at school. I've been here for about a month and have just now started classes. I've been on what they call "casual status" for the last 3 weeks. Basically that means I'm a grunt worker from 0530 till about 1600 six days a week. Cleaning up the squadron area, sweeping, hauling, whatever they need done. It sucks. I finally got off that and started classes on the 21st. Odd, since holiday exodus started on the 22nd. I had 5 hours of class and then got released for 2 weeks. Chances of me remembering anything when I get back = slim. I can't wait for classes to start back up though. I'm gonna learn some pretty sweet stuff. I'll have access to all kinds of classified information about every military action since WW2. Unfortunately, I won't be able to talk about any of it till I turn 94. There's a 70 year clause they make us sign. Man, if I can still think straight when I'm 94, I'm getting a book deal.
Well I promised my sweet wife I wouldn't be stuck in front of this thing all day, but thought it important to update my virtual fan club (yeah, right) on my how-goings. If you're one of my "Portland People" as I call you, I offer to you my apologies. I never really got to say goodbye to any of you. Mostly because we didn't know that God would have us living somewhere else come the holidays. I was fully anticipating spending Christmas with y'all in the NW, but alas…other plans had been made. Instead, I'm spending it in 70-degree weather, trying to wrap my mind around the idea of living in a place I've never been and calling it home. This is the first year that I haven't been around my family for the holidays, and that's tough too. C'est la vie. I will be coming back to P-town in June or July for 2 weeks, after graduation, and before we get stationed in Omaha, so until then…