Side Effects May Include Insomnia.....

So, here it is way late and I'm wide awake. Probably more so than I was at 8 this morning! I blame it all on the coffee. Lou and I bought our first coffee maker when we arrived to Benning. I know, we should have had it years ago. Hospitality is not complete without being able to offer guests a cup of coffee with their dessert. Well, I kept meaning to buy one but since I didn't drink coffee, it slipped my mind....for two years...so, with Lou's early morning schedule here, having to be at formation by 5:50 at latest and sometimes 4:45am, he decided he would become a daily coffee drinker. And, apparently coffee DOESN'T always make my heart race because I had some one night with his special "creme brulee chocolate chip" creamer and was hooked. Tonight, I requested coffee with the Julia Child knock-off dinner I made. And consequently, I had a huge burst of energy that allowed me to finish dinner and wash 2 counter tops full of dirty dishes, fold 3 loads of laundry and put them away, clean both bathrooms, cut Lou's hair and then proceed to mop the kitchen and entryway. All of this and continue to think of things to talk about, which led Lou to say,"I will NEVER let you drink coffee before bed again!" He really was very nice about it, considering that he has to be up by 5 tomorrow morning while I can continue to sleep until 8. But, even he has his limits!
So, after lying in bed for an hour attempting to sleep, I decided to put this energy to some use.

Wednesday I went to an orientation meeting for the wives of Alpha Co. The invitation stated it would last from 3:30-5:00pm and then we would adjourn to the dining hall for a welcoming dinner with our husbands, who would meet us onsite. I was nervous about not showing up at the right building, but it turned out to be on "our" side of post. This is great because our map of Benning is split down the center and navigating from one side of the map to the other side can sometimes be confusing. I don't believe that GPS systems are allowed to map military sites- because ours cannot help us with Benning related addresses. It has an awful and yet terribly predictable tendency to send us to either a gate that is open to traffic from 6-1pm only, or a road under construction. Or, as in the case of the Tricare building beside the hospital, it took me 12 blocks further to a shooting range with a concrete hut nearby. What it lacks in a sense of direction, it makes up for with its sense of humor! Anyway, back to orientation. The first speaker began on time, but waxed eloquent on the many programs available for our education. Very eloquent-and the succeeding speakers only seemed to elaborate on his pace and add.....so by the time the captain prepared to address us, it was 5:15...and dinner was in 15 minutes. Poor captain, he had all the schedules of where and what our husbands would be doing for the next 13 weeks, what weekends they would have off and what we should be "spurring" them on to accomplish in this period, but unfortunately most of us had run out of space on our 4x6 notecards at this point and were frantically scribbling down comments like,"week 5-field Tues-Fri" and "Graduation attire-greens" on whatever margins we had left. I think he saw our frantic scrambling because he announced that he would send us the slides with all the data he was presenting. That was reassuring, but it didn't change the fact that we were already 20 minutes late to this "dinner thing". So, he continued on at breakneck speed and I have to give him credit for making it through 20 or so slides in a 10 minute talk. None of our previous presenters had managed to accomplish anything close to it! Much of his presentation was punctuated with,"He'll be in FTX at this time-but you all don't know what that means anyway" and "this is the list of activities for week 7, but you don't know what those abbreviations stand for anyway"....to the point that I told Lou I felt as though all us wives were branded with "IGNORANT" across our foreheads! There's a scene in "We Were Soldiers"- an officers' wives support meeting,where the rather silly brunette wife says, referring to the laundromat,"And we can only wash whites there. Why have a laundromat where you can't wash all your clothes at once?" and when asked by the others to elaborate,"Well, there's a sign that says,'Whites only'" and then is shocked when the others explain it meant "White (people) only." That's us....in the captain's eyes, that is. Lou was highly amused when I indignantly told him the story of our afternoon- and continues to tease me by asking me a question and following it with,"Oh, but you wouldn't know that-its far too complicated...." :) So, to finish up the story, at 5:45 we made it over to the dining hall to find that our poor husbands had been waiting for us for the past hour and a half! Not only that, but in Alpha Co. there are over 200 soldiers and perhaps 20 are married. So, that meant that 180 single men stood around in ACUs waiting to begin drinking for an hour and a half. "Hope deferred maketh the heart sick"...needless to say, it was amusing! There was a small reception line with hors-d'oeuvres and punch and the poor guys suffered a great while in order to partake of fried popcorn shrimp and meatballs with vegetable trays-all on a smaller than saucer size plate! Quite hilarious to watch them trying to cram a night's meal onto that 4" in diameter china. We nicknamed the "meal" "Ranger Training Dinner", since during Ranger training the food is a scarcity. One round and the caterers were cleaned out. Even the punch was gone. The only things that survived the onslaught were the cocktail sauce and ranch dressing. Even Alpha Co. wasn't hungry enough to take them on alone.

This weekend was a wonderful 4 days of catching up on all weeklong news with Lou, cooking new recipes and searching Craigslist for needed furniture. We were thankful to find a beautiful living room set-couch and loveseat in dark chocolate leather. The couple that owned it had a condo in FL and he was laid off so they had to sell both the condo and the furnishings. The set is beautiful and was a steal at $500! We were thrilled to get it- although I aged at LEAST a year on the ride home with it- after wedging it into our truck bed and securing with multiple bungee cords! Lou laughed everytime we went over a bump and I clutched for the armrest, as though securing my fingernails into it would somehow help the sofa to "hang on" for dear life. :) We managed to get it through our small doorways and now are considering signing up for CSFA (Couch Sitters Forever Anonymous) to help with our addiction! This couple also had a rug, 2 lamps and 2 doormats that we were able to snatch up and have helped to make the house cosier. I especially like the rug. A very unassuming beige plush 8x10 that I treated with Resolve and looks next to new- but that's not the best part of it. I dumped soy sauce (ARGHHHHH) on it last night and ran in a panic to the kitchen to get paper towels and cleaner. But, it was amazing as I blotted it and the sauce literally lifted off the threads without leaving a spot! Love it!

Lou had some bad news at the end of the week. He was just getting ready to breathe a sigh of relief that his week of "platoon sergeant" was ended when he was informed by the cadre that he would continue in the post for this week as well...and there are some nasty rumors that he may be doing it for the entire 13 weeks. All thoughts of uninterrupted lunch hours and dinners have flown out the window. It wouldn't be a problem if there wasn't quite so much mass confusion. The first week he chalked it up to people being uninformed so he made it his mission to inform them. His men receive 2 and 3 page emails about all required uniforms,paperwork, and classroom work for the following days. It is my special theory that they see the emails, click "read" or "delete" and then 2 days later suddenly realize that it is the night before class and they have nothing prepared. So, he receives many...many phone calls from lost people wondering what they need to do to be prepared for (TADA!) the following day. These come during his only time at home-lunch hour and from the time he gets off until bedtime. Then, when its considered bad manners to call because of the lateness of the hour- TEXTs....and then a phone call to see if he received the text. LOL Tonight he prayed for patience. I think that's a wise thing to do under the circumstances.

Well, its late and I should be asleep! I think that I am definitely with Mark Twain on early rising and its benefits. I've been listening to his "Roughing It" on cd for the past week, the account of his trip to Nevada as a young man. I am continually amused at his purely clever way of describing people and places. He makes me laugh, but even better, he makes Lou laugh! So, I was doing some reading online and found this:
Rise early. It is the early bird that catches the worm. Don't be fooled by this absurd saying; I once knew a man who tried it. He got up at sunrise and a horse bit him.
- Mark Twain's Notebook