Diary of a Day
What a marvelous and fantastic day.
If by marvelous and fantastic I mean over 15 hours on base, three hurried meals, several half-interrupted tasks, and a mild dose of panic as garnish.
Wake up around 5 as usual, since I haven’t slept later in about two or three years. I can go back to sleep usually on weekends, but long since learned that is a bad idea during the week. At the gym by 6. Find my Soldiers, make them stop complaning about whatever it is this week that hurts and then go help another NCO get his Soldiers set for a bike physical training test, which he has never conducted but I have, to my dismay, taken a few times and never intend to again. Congress may be on the fence about waterboarding being torture; they really need to look at the bike physical training test in the Army first.
But as usual, I digress. The gym today was muscular strength, so I get my Soldiers doing what they are supposed to and then watch to make sure they aren’t trying to find ways around it. After the gym, at work by 0730 to finish whatever reports I did not get to finish the day before. Usually several. Chat with my local national, who has a habit of talking excessively about random topics, get the Soldiers in, find a project to occupy their time and keep them away from me so I can get something accomplished. Take one over to housing because they need to move her from her barracks room before she is sharing a bathroom with a male senior enlisted or something. Housing, as usual, takes an hour and a half to complete a ten minute task. I feel any semblance of life and soul wither awayeach time I acknowledge the time wasted every time I am sucker enough to step foot in the general vicinity.
But I digress again. Skip lunch, because housing prevented me from getting reports finished. Write those, remember I promised my husband I would go see about buying him a gas-guzzling and horribly large pickup truck for his eventual return from points east and sandy. Go see the car sales person and build the truck. On the way there my First Sergeant calls. He asks me how flexible I am. I point out that our Equal Opportunity representative might have issues with him asking that, particularly since he prefaced it with the comment that he had just talked to the battalion commander, which makes me more nervous about anything they might ever discuss. He ignores my distress, says I can call her later, and informs me that the warrant officer, whom I had been expecting late this week, was instead about to be en route to my location so I should really call about finding him somewhere to stay. I call my Soldiers and give them instructions, try to at least get the truck saved in the system so I don’t have to start over. I can’t finish, as I have to go to an appointment to talk to someone about an inane task that normal people would have solved with a phone call. Head over there, wait around half an hour, get told that person is busy because other people were late for other appointments with her that day, come back in an hour. Head back to the office. Finish plans for the warrant officer.
Breathe. Get halfway through that and process two more reports. Grab my Soldiers and my local national, who luckily surfaced around this time as sometimes I forget where he is, have them give me presentations I asked them to prepare for the warrant officer about what they do. Give them changes, realize I am about to be late for my rescheduled appointment. Go to the appointment. Come back.
Breathe. Nope, no time for that, call my husband to double check the truck and send me some papers while finalizing two reports. Get a call from my First Sergeant asking that I please keep the cork on my crazy for a few days until the warrant at least gets over his jet lag. Agree to at least make an effort. Print everything off and realize I have to go meet the warrant officer. Dump half of my exceedingly messy desk into my safe and the other half into my car in a haphazard attempt to exude some professionalism and a semi-clean desk and drive over to the other base where Army Lodging has set up shop. Meet the warrant. Get him into his room, offer to take him to find food and pray he will decline as I still have things to do. He does. I could hug him, but that would be weird. I leave him to run over and grab some fast food, which I hardly ever eat, so I can head back to base to finish the truck piece while my food gets nice and cold in the car. Eat it on the way home as I realize I have been running around for 15 hours and for every thing I scratched off my to do list, I had added three more. With the early arrival of my warrant officer, I now effectively doubled the list because everything I was going to do to prepare for him I had planned to do tomorrow. Tomorrow, of course, just became yesterday…
Vacation comes in a week and a half when I leave for the States for a ten week course, given as a gift by my First Sergeant who, despite knowing those silly animals up at our training shop, is still surprised when things happen such as my class last March getting denied because the correct paperwork didn’t make it to the correct place in even remotely close to the correct time.
But my reenlistment paperwork is en route.
And my MRI is Friday to check and make sure I still have a brain at all, or if it hasn’t run off somewhere to escape this madness. I do wish it would leave a note as to where it might have gone, as I might like to join it when I have a moment to breathe.