This was written by Yoni last week, but he forgot to put it up.
Generally
speaking a Marine Corps holiday weekend is a good time. The Marines go out drinking; the beaches are
open. And we usually get 4-days off.
This is
my last week of work before Calanit was born:
I went
with Engineers and EOD to a demolition range blowing amazing quantities of
explosives, and learning a great deal about use of High Explosives as a tool in
mobility (really fascinating stuff).
I watched
a CH-53 Super Stallion run night drills in retrieving heavy loads from the
ground without landing (I have Marines that run under the helicopter and attach
slings to the bottom of a 33,230lb bumblebee).
I
performed chaplaincy as part of an Evacuation Center for Non-Combatant
Evacuation Operations (if you need to evacuate an entire country of US personnel,
call us, we’re pretty good at it).
I rode around in the back of HMMWVs (Hum-vees) and 7-ton trucks. It was neat, but it was also very tiring.
I set up
a field chapel/morale tent (in addition to the tent that I slept in during the
week). Between pumping people with loads
of Gatorade powder and knowledge (my copy of “Sex in the Text” was a big hit),
I think I had a pretty good impact in the field.
It was
Monday, it was Friday, A good week. Success for me.
So now
that I’m back to work full time, a good 96 at home with the baby should be the
nice calming thing that I need. Not so
much.
With a
deployment coming up, with half the Marines checking out during the weekend,
with my mother in the hospital (she is doing well by the way, but a Japanese
hospital is more stress than an American hospital – especially if you don’t
speak Japanese), and with a one-month old baby at home who you want to spend
time with. It turns a 96-Labor-Day
Holiday into a crazy hootenanny. And
that’s not even counting the hours that I wish I spent with my wife before a
deployment, but who I’ve been neglecting in this gobbledygook.
(Fun
fact: I misspelled the last word of the previous sentence, and spell check
corrected it. I thought gobbledygook was a 2-word made-up phrase
like nervous hoolaliya)
The week at work has been crazy, and I am certainly looking forward to Shabbat. Hopefully, we get a little time to rest and relax before I set sail. I’m even willing to change a diaper or two (or 14). Shabbat will be a very necessary matter indeed.
