Spinning

Dead or Alive – You Spin Me Round on YouTube

This is an apt description of my relationship with deployment at the moment…

We got a four-day weekend for the Fourth of July (thus no posting), and even though this was my Last Holiday (for a year, anyway), I ended up spending most of it going through my stuff. Packing, sorting, working through piles and piles of Stuff… the stuff that I’ve been saying for years that I needed to go through, that I just kind of managed to avoid… and the most irritating thing about this process is that it is never-ending; the mess seems worse now than it did when I started. However, that might be because I now have piles: Salvation Army, Trash, Storage, Deployment Bags (carried), Ship to Myself for Winter, Take with Me on My Roadtrip, etc. Hard to keep it all in my head at once!

However, even though the mess seems hard to negotiate, things are getting done. I’m close to the point where I won’t be utterly ashamed of myself when the movers come in to pack away my things. Last time, I was… they just went into my rooms and packed the piles, as they stood, into boxes (which led to my mess becoming the unmanageable thing that I am dealing with now… I should learn from my past!).

At work, it’s getting crazy. I have all of 2 unbooked work days before I’m leaving for my en-route training; the rest is taken up with appointments, training, and such. I still don’t have orders (though my fingers are crossed that I’ll have them tomorrow), and I need orders to do the stuff like, say, scheduling the movers to come and take away all my stuff. Oh, and to schedule my flight out to Iraq, too. Oh well… these minor annoyances are to be expected in the process. I will be glad, though, when I am safely on the way, and whatever is left done or undone is a matter that is solidly behind me.

Next memorable landmark: my cross-country roadtrip, where I abandon my most precious things (cars and cat) to the care of family for the time that I’m gone. Last time, this roadtrip took me two days. This year, it’ll be four. Oh, with a jog to visit a good friend of mine in Ohio (I discovered that this only increased my drive by 4 hours, and it took a night of hotels off the book!).

Isn’t it a truly great thing to be taking a four-day roadtrip in the midst of the highest gas prices ever? I’m quite thrilled to consider the extra cash I’ll be shelling out. Sigh.

So, there is what has been keeping my mind spinning over the past week or so. My suspicion is that it’s going to keep going until I’m out of the country! (So by this time next month, my nerves will be terribly frayed in consequence.)