A Little Break Would Be a Good Thing

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.