I thought that I’d take a break from weightier thoughts and go through a status update on where I am with my process of preparing to deploy this time through. The process of getting back to Iraq is almost as fraught with anxiety as getting there in the first place was. The sheer amount of paperwork and front-end preparation has been causing me some insomnia as of late… I keep waking myself up with worries about whether I’ll have everything in place by the time I need it.
Over the last couple weeks, ever since I came back to work from my time off, I’ve been scheduling appointments and working almost exclusively on the deployment prep… I’ve had no fewer than three medical appointments already, and a fourth scheduled tomorrow. I’ve had blood drawn twice and two immunizations–my arm is still sore and swollen from either the Hepatitis B shot or the Anthrax one… while I know it’s all for the best, it’s annoying when you’ve got a big itchy welt on your arm for several days. Thankfully, as of tonight it seems to be going down. (Finally!) Medical stuff to go: two more immunizations (another booster of both Hep B and Anthrax), a dental appointment, and the medical clearance appointment–but since I was just in to see my doctor last week, I don’t anticipate any problems that way.
Today I spent the day doing CBT (that’s our shorthand for computer-based training). I did a dozen online training courses, everything from SABC (self aid buddy care, or what the rest of the world knows as first aid) to M9 familiarization (though why I should take a computer course about the weapon that I just certified on a month ago is anyone’s guess). I also learned about the laws of armed conflict (LOAC), and now know that I’m not supposed to shoot noncombatants… ummm… I hope that would be a no-brainer… and I’ve had a tutorial on Iraqi history and culture, which was annoying because it was out-of-date and my last deployment left me with more working knowledge anyhow. But it was all useful stuff, and if I was going over for the first time, it would be good for a “lay of the land” perspective.
My current headache is my security clearance… it may be expiring during the time that I’m there, and that means that I’m going to have to work with people long-distance in order to get it updated. This is like pulling teeth even when you’re right there and you can go in and bother the people who are throwing hurdles in your path, in person, daily… I think I may have to invoke some higher powers (read: supervisors, colonels, maybe even a general or two if it comes to it) in order to make that happen. However, I have faith in the fact that once you’re there, people make things happen that would be next to impossible stateside, where no one feels that much of a sense of urgency about ANYTHING.
I’m inside the 60-day window where I need to really get going on things, and they’re finally moving. Instead of feeling like I’m slogging through mud uphill, my earlier efforts are now starting to pay off. I’ve got almost all of my uniform items issued to me, and merely need to wait for one more hat to arrive before I can pack off hats and jackets to get name tapes and rank sewn on them. I still don’t have official orders, so I can’t schedule my appointment to get movers to come in and pack all my stuff and store it away for the year that I’ll be in the sandbox. You aren’t OFFICIALLY going until you get the medical clearance… so, Lord willing, tomorrow will be that next step out of the way.
As an aside, I’m quite glad to be going at this time of year and not at the changeover of a fiscal year the way I did last time. I almost didn’t get my orders last time because they needed to be on the new fiscal year’s budget, and Congress was being recalcitrant about approving the defense budget–I had to wait two extra weeks, a mere 10 days before I was scheduled to leave, in order to get the orders cut. That was not fun. So what I pay in several more months of excessive heat on the front end, I’m not paying in worry that I’m not going to make it there in time.
Let’s see… on the personal side, my house is still not where I’d want it to be. I sincerely wanted to be able to go through my apartment and get rid of all my excess stuff, so that I wouldn’t be storing boxes full of miscellania that I’d just have to get rid of later. However, that has been a difficult thing to get moving on, so it appears that I might just have to do my serious junk-culling in summer/fall 2009. Oh well. On the bright side, however, I’ve managed to get any remaining financial kinks out of my way. The State of Ohio is finally convinced that I don’t owe them taxes for 2004, my pre-Air Force 401(k) is days away from being rolled over into my military thrift savings plan, and aside from needing to cancel a few subscriptions, wrap up the household bills, and set up a good savings fund for the money that tends to pile up when you’re deployed (because you don’t have much to spend it on and you’re making extra because it’s tax-free and you get bonuses for being in a combat zone)… well, other than that, I’m looking close to being done.
I’m working on a shopping list for all the personal-care necessities on drugstore.com… that wondrous site is a lifesaver for deployed Americans! You get all the choice of being in a good drugstore/superstore, and they will ship to deployed addresses. More retailers should get into this market… I’m sure there’s good money to be made there (recall what I just said about having money to burn and nothing to spend it on!). Heck, I’m even building a mental list of books and DVDs for my few spare moments when I’m not working.
My cats will be staying with my family again, as will my car, and I’ve already got a partial plan in place to spend my mid-tour R&R leave with my mother somewhere in the Mediterranean… It will be a nice mid-winter break for her and not as much of a headache travel-wise for me (and much less jet lag involved–believe me, the time-zone adjustment when you’re going halfway around the world is not a quick one!).
Thinking back to the online training, I was amused to find that my proficiency with a couple of the courses was actually really helped by my TV-watching habits. Grey’s Anatomy turned out to be a real help with my first-aid course… You pick up enough about common problems like shock and dehydration and immobilizing fractures and stopping bleeding when you watch whole TV seasons of hospital shows to get you through a fairly difficult multiple-choice test on the topic! Similarly, my background of 24 and Stargate helped with “Use of Force” and “Laws of Armed Conflict”, though sometimes in real life the right answer isn’t to go charging directly into the path of enemy fire, safe in the knowledge that you’re the hero of the series so they won’t kill you off, to save a small child… 
I thought it was funny to see how fiction and real life can overlap in such a weird way.
Otherwise… It will be interesting watching a big election happen when I’m completely out of things and out of the country, to boot. Particularly an election that could have direct impact on my job, though I doubt that even if someone decided to pull all Americans out of Iraq immediately, it would significantly shorten the length of my projected tour. (Why not? Because I’m not going to be a member of a regular battalion out there fighting in the streets… the headquarters-type staff are typically drawn-down by letting their tours expire and not sending someone to replace them when they’re done.)
Once again I’m in a strange limbo about shopping and buying things… I’m making a big dent in the stuff left in my pantry, trying to eat up all the staples there so that I don’t have to throw out too much. I don’t want to buy any civilian clothes, because there won’t be opportunity to wear them, and by the time I come back they’ll probably be going out of style. I don’t want more furniture or household stuff, since it’s all going into storage anyway… same goes with cool gadgets and electronic equipment. (Though I’ve been flirting with the notion of purchasing a new laptop to take with me… all that holds me back at the moment is the unpleasant notion of transferring all my files over from my old one!)
It’s really hitting me how I’m going to be out of the loop for a year. Even six months over in Iraq was enough to make me feel “reverse culture shock” when I got back home… readjusting to the rhythms of normal life took me most of this past year. I finally realized–tonight–that maybe I’d adjusted when I was watching a TV show with a hostage situation and didn’t automatically think “how on earth can one neurotic person with a little gun be keeping a roomful of people at bay?”
So, that’s the Captain Kj deployment status update. I’m sorry if it’s boring… these are the things that are occupying my time as of late, coloring most of my waking moments and far too many of my sleeping moments, too!
Posted by Kjirstin 
