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Saturday, November 29, 2008

CNN Heroes

The CNN Heroes special and the Lou Dobbs Heroes special were supposed to be on TV Thanksgiving Day. Instead, we got to watch non-stop coverage of the terrorist attack . I was kind of dissapointed because BBG has started a charity to raise money for the Veterans Wheelchair Games and Quilts of Valor and they were going to do a blurb about it.

Tonight the Lou Dobbs special is almost over and we haven't seen the blurb about her charity but the special has been very good. I would encourage anyone and everyone to watch it Sunday November 30, 2008 at 7:00pm EST.

The one thing I keep returning to in this blog is that we all need to reach out and recognize these veterans every day. Regardless of the economy, the election, your political beliefs about the war, these young men and women have sacrificed their lives for us. They deserve to come home to a fully funded VA and to a country ready and willing to provide every resource they need.

BTW - her twelve seconds of quilting fame were on at the end of the show and it was pretty good. It wasn't as long as the interview and preparation I did with CNN but I am very grateful that they considered her story worthy of recognition.

Now, the grommets are being butt heads and we're in full post-TBI Migrane mode with shots and mid level drugs on board and it isn't doing a damn thing so I'm off to the medical lock box for the good stuff.

TIA

Earl

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Homeward Bound

Once again, I probably don't need to post a damn thing - the title says it all.

Two weeks in Germany is enough. Its a beautiful country but more than anything it just reminds me how good it is to be home and how different and rich and abundant our lives are in the States. It doesn't help that I don't know the language nor do I have an ear for it. Spanish and French came so much more easily and my colleagues here speak English quite well.

aka - there is zero incentive to really learn.

Being the guy I am, I have tried to learn a couple of words each day. Today, I learned two: one at work (Wetter - weather) and the other (Bus - Bus) I leaarned this evening. I learned Bus as I was driving into Frankfurt in Bumper to bumper traffic next to the empty bus lane which had the word bus printed all over it. As I debated with my A driver whether or not I could get away with claiming car pool status with the local polizei if they pulled me over, he kindly pointed out that bus is bus and its painted in big yellow letters every fifty feet for ten miles down Franfurter Strasse.

Everyone's a comedian and we were late for dinner.

I remember coming home from a year in the jungle and how astonished I was when I arrived in a Northern Lake Effect Snow prone place after a trains, planes, buses ride straight from the Amazon river basin. No shanties or raw sewage in the towns, no smell, and no jungle; no beans and rice and constant runs. My first trip to the commissary almost overwhelmed me and the three frozen pizzas I ate when I got home two hours later did the trick instead. It was not a "thank god I'm home with my family" experience. It was an overwhelming, is this real experience that will stay with me forever.

This is different. I'm just glad to be going home to be with my wife and kids. I miss them.

I can't imagine what the plane plane ambulance hospital ambulance plane plane ambulance hospital car ride home from Iraq was like for BBG. I think maybe I'll ask one night when we're all tucked in, drugs are on board, and sleep is almost there. That's the best time for questions like that.

In my defense - she did it all on morphine so it must have been kind of fun or at least very hazy. .

In her defense - business class seats on a certain German Airline turn into beds, there is nintendo in the back of my seat, booze is free, and we get two very good meals turned out by Scarlett Jo look alikes.

Jello is absent.

TIA

Earl

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Dreams

In America, we have the power to make our dreams come true.

I try to write about what we're going through with post Iraq 101. I skip a lot of things because they're private. Since I have thrown anonymity to the wind, I can't talk about some things so I'm going to try and keep this broad.

My wife and I served for a myriad of reasons: Patriotism, food, college money, a life surrounded by men and women of honor. All these things and more drive us and our friends to stand on a wall when others will not. In my case, it was just as much about achieving my dreams as anything else. You know - fast and low in the dark. My BBG did it for family and for her dreams - to be a PA and she was well on her to way to making it until all of this happened.

I am in Germany for work now, playing the loud American, and each day I realize how fortunate we are to grow up in North America. We have bigger homes, cheaper gas, and boundless opportunities. We can achieve whatever we dream - just ask Obama.

All, we have to do is put in the effort and we can become whatever we want. - an astronaut, a PA, even a pilot. To achieve these dreams we have to continue to live in a society of endless possibility - a place where we can achieve the impossible, a place where we can worship who and what we want, and a place where we have the freedom to go after it all. These men and women who stand for us (all of them) do just that. They give us the opportunity to go after it all and a safe place to do it from. I feel privileged to be a part of that special group.

The hardest thing about getting messed up in Iraq is that it kills your dreams. The endless possibilities are gone and now you are faced with a life of limitations. Families of the injured and wounded face difficult financial times, uncertain medical outcomes and a lifetime knowing that they cannot do what they had once intended to do. They have lost their dreams. My son's favorite saying has become, "what’s the point?" I wish I had the right answer but I don't. I'm a father and husband not the miracle worker. I tell him this: "Sometimes you have to change your dreams." I did and so is my wife but no matter what, somewhere in the back of your mind is what if? What if I hadn't gotten hurt? What if I could still do this or that? When a dream becomes so deeply ingrained in your soul (just what dreams do) it becomes very hard to give it up. And so your life become overwhelmingly filled with why's instead of what’s or hows.

I'm trying very hard to switch back to what’s and hows but I've got to be honest with you, some days its still filled with WHYs.

TIA

Earl

Saturday, November 8, 2008

travelin

Its funny - my team lost the election and I'm really not that bothered. regardless of who the next president is, they are in a for a long and very difficult road to the recovery of the economy and our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bottom line - whoever won (Obama) got screwed!!!

... and I'm OK with that :-)

Duty calls and I'm off for Europe for a couple of weeks for work. I don't like leaving BBG and kidlets alone, especially when kidlets have caused so much heart ache (and money to solve said heart ache) recently but when I left the van and walked into the terminal today, I was totally at peace. She's fine.

Regardless of everything that has happened, here we are and she's fine. She may forget where she parked the mini van at Target tomorrow or forget to sign homework sheets and let the dogs out in the morning but in the grand scheme of things - every little thing gonna be all right. Its like letting them go off to college. They go and as hard as it is - you let them. They will sink or swim on their own.

This is important to me as I look at flying again. If every one doesn't eat, go to school, pay the bills (the right ones) and balance the check book - if those things don't happen, I'm kind of leaving them in the learch and I'm not that kind of guy.

BTW Iraq or Afghanistan are at least fifteen months out so we have plenty of time to plan all of this if we need to.

Swim baby

Swim!!!

I love you - Earl.

Monday, November 3, 2008

Argggghhhhhh

Its 30 minutes prior to election day and I am up - sleep is fleeting these days. I know it shouldn't be but I know I'll be here writing in another two hours and work is only six hours away. I don't know if that makes me manic, a moron, or a writer.

I think maybe manic and moron.

I'm in a why me mood today. Its not my BBG's fault and its not the kids fault. I think I own this one all by myself.

That just makes it worse - ownership!

Do you think "Dubya" is up at all hours owning what he's kicked into motion?

I've been offered a slot as an assault pilot for a guard unit. Here is where you roll your eyes and call me a moron. Go ahead - I keep saying it to myself but then the little red devil on right shoulder says; "Do it - you know you want to" and the little white angel on left shoulder says in an appropriately squeeky and less manly voice "If you do..." If you have ever been on your first airplane ride, you probably know the wonderment and freedom of soaring among the clouds.

"... put out my hand touched the face of god" (Gillespie Magee, 1941)

Now - imagine doing it at treetop level, flying a hundred plus miles an hour wearing night vision goggles with the tracers floating up in the distance. I would kill to do this again. I was born to do it. After a few years off of flying I still dream in NVG Green. I sat down with my books and in two hours I had memorized word for word every EP and limitation on the UH-60A/L and I can do blind start-ups like it was yesterday. My apologies to the wife and kidlets but nothing aside from finishing my novels has ever given me the raw emotion of a long night mission in a shitty place. Just writing about it causes the sights, the sounds, the feelings, to well up from inside of me - magnetic!

My BBG was very supportive when I broached the topic. We haven't talked in ten days.

I am a centurian trapped in the poets body, saddled with the guilt of a wife broken in my stead, and father of children who would certainly deserve to resent my flying off to inhospitable places in search of an unforgiving mistress.

I know what the answer should be but I agonize over it all the same. Am I less of a man because I stay behind and pick up the broken pieces for the next couple of decades or am I less of a man because I desperately want my chance to fly fast and low in the dark?

I should have gone to law school.

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Rough Week

I think the title says it all. Some days, some weeks, hell - some years just suck more than others and this week takes the cake.

I wish I had the magic bullet for anyone else out there going through all this but I don't. Every time I start to think I'm getting the hang of this whole post Iraq bullshit - life takes me down a peg. The kids are in trouble, my BBG hates me and no matter what I do its wrong.

I can't even seem to write this week and I was jazzed about the Breast Cancer Screenplay (different from the novel). Every time I sit down to write it feels like my heads going to explode and crap flys from my finger tips. I know its a phaze but I've never had a bad writing phase so I'm a little bit morose about the whole thing.

On a bright note - I scored two goals at my hockey game tonight and one of our local Congressional candidates' (Mike Coffman) wife showed up at our house tonight doing the traditional door to door thing. First, I am totally impressed that someone is actually doing that - this was the first candidate (or supporter) who has shown up at my door since the madness began. Second - she made my wife feel good. I have been failing miserably at making anyone feel good so it was nice to come home post hockey high and actually find my wife in a good mood.

It didn't last but for a few minutes someone running for Congress made my disabled vet feel like she mattered. I know she's not Joe the Plumber and I know its the economy stupid but I would like to remind you that young men and women continue to die in our names. The media just doesn't share it because it makes for bad ratings.

Thank you Mrs. Mike Coffman

BTW - you may have noticed some changes to my music. Its easier than the monthly "whats on my Ipod" that every other blogger does.