Cut the demons out of my head?
--Wintersleep, "Weighty Ghost"
It's finally beginning to feel like winter in Vegas. And not a moment too soon. I was thinking I was not going to get to wear my new hoodie at all this season. With winter comes the cold and chill. Both literal and figurative. As I've resorted to putting three blankets on my bed and sleeping in sweats and a touque (this because I save a lot of cold hard cash by keeping the thermostat at a cool 62-degrees), I wish there was a way to ward off the cold I've been fighting the past few weeks.
So traditionally, I used the Nutshell as a way to keep my family and friends informed as to the major, minor and minute events in my life. What I have come to realize recently is that the Nutshell has been my own personal therapy. It kept me lucid when I really wanted to go insane. The weekly act of writing, of sitting down, and thinking about what has happened in my life, and deciding how I was going to present that to the outside world--deciding how I myself would view those events--helped me in ways I'm only now beginning to recognize.
Also, it has been a tradition that the Nutshell contain tidbits of my dating life. I had hoped that would end when I got married...but it didn't. So, it's back to bachelorhood I go.
And with that, here is the first in what I hope to be another good collection of snippets from my life. My friend's daughter invited me to her 11th birthday party. "It's a skate party," she had said. I agreed to go, in part because I hate to turn down an invitation to a birthday party, in part because I haven't used my rollerblades in quite a while, and in part because I hoped it would in some way impress her mom. (A bit of background: her mom is gorgeous, and single.)
So, I showed up to the party, not really having thought about what I had gotten myself into. There we were. At the skating rink. With a bunch of 4th-5th grade girls. And I don't know any of the parents. By "parents", I mean "moms", because no dads would even think of going to a skate party, unless it was their own daughter's.
Which brings me to the source of real awkwardness. My lady friend's ex-husband shows up. (Do you like how I just referred to her as my "lady friend"? Yeah, I thought you'd like that.)
What to say....
Well, I am not taking any classes this semester...and I'm wondering why I miss it so much. Actually, I know exactly why I miss it. Because, if I could I would be a professional student. I would gladly take classes for the rest of my life if I could somehow make a living doing it.
The last exciting thing I'll tell you about before I go: the phone call on Friday. I had just arrived to work, and was settling in to grade my students' final exams for the first semester when my phone rings. It's the company commander. "Hey, LT," he says, "I just wanted to let you know we've been alerted and we may be deploying to Northern Nevada. There is a brush fire up there that's threatening a high school and some homes. If we deploy, we'll leave at 1500 today and we'll be gone for 7 days. I should know by 9:00 if we are going or not."
My heart sinks and races at the same time. I don't want to leave because I still have to enter the grades in the computer, and there are still two classes who need to take their tests. Two classes who still need to write essays that I still have to grade. And I don't want to leave that to my fellow teachers to do. But, I'm also excited about the prospect of getting to work with my unit in a real-life situation, rather than just training exercises. He calls me back fifteen minutes later and tells me we are deploying and I need to have about 20 soldiers from my platoon to the armory by 1100.
So, I make arrangements for someone to cover my class, and I rush home to pack. On my way to the armory I get a call informing me that the situation is not as urgent as originally perceived. And we may not be going to Reno.
When I get to the armory, we sit and wait for word from our leaders, who finally decide at about 11:00 that they will not deploy us, and we can all go back to work/sleep/home. I left exhilarated and somewhat disappointed.
And that's my week in a Nutshell,
Hop
