Two, and three.

So yeah! Tada I'm gradiated. I am now fully and officially a soldier in the US Army. 16 weeks of Advanced Individual Training ahead. AIT is at Ft. Gordon, GA. I'm hoping to have interwebs there. We'll see when I report to the post tomorrow. If I do then yay I'm back. We'll see. Well I guess that is it for now. The rest of my time shall be spent talking with the Orclette who I've been missing very badly. And with Wulfa who I've been missing on a whole different level.

Ft. Jackson graduates around 50% of the Army's basic training program. One would think that they'd have more to do for the families on family day given that fact. But no, there's almost nothing. The refrain from almost every soldier we talked to was "Did you find anything interesting to do?" "No, we just wandered around the ____ for awhile." Almost every soldier did eat WAY too much. Damm certainly did :D We walked into the commissary and he stopped in awe at the sight of their little cake aisle. But before all that: There was a little demonstration beginning at 9am. Around 9:25 am they released us to go find our soldiers. Damm looks sooo different. I won't say that I didn't recognize him because I did, but it almost felt like that. The Orclette recognized him right away although it took her a couple of hours to warm up to him. By the end of the day she only wanted her daddy to hold her :D I was in pain all day yesterday. I haven't been abl...

Sooooo sore. Only 5 hours of driving today and we arrived in Columbia early this afternoon. Damm got his cellphone back and we started texting, then he called. This is still not technically allowed but the drill sergeants were turning a blind eye-every single person in his platoon was on the phone. So we've been talking on and off all afternoon. It's rather weird-he's changed so much. In my opinion it's all for the better, but still, he's not the same person he was 10 weeks ago. So it's almost as if it's the first date all over again. I guess deployment (or basic + AIT) is one way to keep the spark in your marriage ... Tomorrow we'll be arriving a full 2 hours before Family Day events begin. Because the base will be swarming with family members we have planned to spend most of our time in the shade sitting on blankets. Friday I get briefed and sign Damm out. Actually his mother will have to sign him out since I'm not driving at all at this point :D ...

Sometimes I wonder if I was wise to reproduce. I like my kids. I don't like other kids. But most of the time the Orclette and I hang out around adults so I don't have to deal with other people's offspring. (I feel the need to clarify that if you are a friend of mine with kids I will make extra efforts to be nice to your kid and would never tell you I didn't like them.) This trip has caused me to ruminate on the issue, however. On our way to Waco from Houston we stopped at MacDonalds. As we were leaving another little child, possibly 4 or 5, tried to follow us out the door sans parents. I held it open for her, as it seemed to be the polite thing to do. Mother-in-law had quite a different reaction: she prevented the child (by position, not by touching the child) from leaving MacDonalds and inquired where the child's parents were. A somewhat harrassed looking father was not far behind the child and was very grateful to mother-in-law for not letting his daughter saunter...