Harrowing, I tell you. Absolutely harrowing.

Better late than never. DH is home, and has been with me for the past nine days. Meaning tomorrow I'll be taking him to SOI at Camp Pendleton and we won't see each other for another month or more.

And, you know what? I have better things to do than hang around the fence of a military installation and risk getting shot at.

There's a lot to say about what I've been through in the past months, when I've been absent from my keyboard, but I just realized that this is possibly the last evening I'll spend with him for four months (though hopefully only one)

So have a look over these couple photos from the past ten days:





(Ugh, there is an absolute dearth of good images of us together... The first is from family day, the second is from... eating out with my parents a few days ago)

someone got a phone call....

Not me! Well, I got one last week, and I've been meaning to write about it.

But my father in law got a call tonight (DH thinking that it was too late to call me... yeah right!)... from PFC DH!!!

Yeah, just over two weeks before graduation, and my MAN is already Private First Class.

How awesome is that?

Quick Crosspost

I was just writing to DH that it's been a long time--

That's as far as I got before I put down my pen and reached for the laptop to write this post.

Because what I was telling him is that it's been a long time since I've posted to any of my blogs. I do so so so much writing to DH that I never have much left over for blogging. And since I'm in my era of hedonism I haven't forced myself to update.

But I'm doing fine. Having a chill time, doing lots of cooking, drawing, and reading. The things I love.

The letters I'm sending to DH seem to be getting longer. Sometimes I wonder if I'm overwhelming him. I still go two weeks or more at a stretch without hearing from him. The last letter I got was long and wonderful, though. Here's the extra special bits:

It's kind of crazy here [at Pendleton] since our DIs are able to get
away with ITing us [obscene amounts of pushups] more due to the lack
of officers compared to MCRD but! the good news is I'm pretty
unscathed by it. Being the platoon Picasso gets me out of a LOT of
trouble, since all the DIs need me, if they want drawings. ... Anyway,
I'm drawing every day now, sometimes hours at a time. My senior DI is
having me plot some paintings for him and some other DIs so I'll be
learning to use acrylics. Never thought bootcamp would teach me this
much about art!

The stuff I've been drawing isn't my super best, simply due to the
conditions I'm drawing in (literally hunched in a corner feet away
from DIs thrashing people and throwing things all over) but it's been
steadily improving. Also, I'm known as "Nickelodeon" to most of the
company DIs, since usually all they know is that I did something for
Aatar, so I've been having them come out of nowhere ASKING me if I'll
draw them, their motorcycles, batman, etc.

I'm also starting to be put on a different schedule from the rest of
the platoon. Like I do the required training with them, drill, rifle
stuff, most of the PT and Knowledge classes, but whenever the platoon
is doing less vital things I usually end up at the scribe's desk
drawing, or drawing in the Duty Hut, which is the mysterious DI lair
only a few recruits get to behold.

The only way it could've been a better letter was if he had been more responsive to my letters. In eight half-pages, he only references things I've sent him twice. The give and take, question and reply, is what is so great about our communications at all other times.

I wonder if he doesn't get to write to me more because he's so amazing and doing special projects for the DIs. Annoying!

But I'm doing fine. Keeping in touch with friends, especially one new and one old who keep me sane. Aspects of the situation are annoying, but I can't change most of them so I do my best to keep them from getting under my skin.

Here's some art I spent several hours on today.

He is so lucky

How awesome am I? (just kidding)

That's the back of the piece of watercolor paper that went into DH's letter today. (The front had other painting doodles.) The whole thing is about 3.5 inches tall, and I've been happily painting and listening to an audiobook for God-only-knows how long.

My favorite is the cow.

Now to mail it and get to bed!

Hedonathon, Days 1 and 2

I went into an odd spiral late Saturday night, trying, as usual, to understand my place in the world. The typical arguments came through my mind about limbo, whether or not I can be a productive member of society, so on and so forth. I circled again and again, trying to discern what responsibilities I have to other people and what obligations in my mind are fabrications for myself.

In the end, I decided to strip down the things I require of myself to the bare minimum: keeping the kitchen clean for my hosts, writing letters to DH, and keeping myself clean and healthy.

Other than that, I'm planning on spending March doing only whatever the heck I feel like.

Don't want to clean my room? Fine, sleep in. Don't feel like doing yoga? Read a book without guilt. Not in the mood to flog myself into working on a project nobody else cares about? Not gonna try!

In the past I've tried to fight my lack of responsibilities. I've felt so guilty about "doing nothing" with my life that I've made up things to work on, but even when I can point and say "I'm doing this", nobody seems to care that much. For a month, or at least until I get sick of it, I'm going to revel in my freedom, in this forced vacation.

This sounds extremely childish, to you, doesn't it? I don't really care, because I can't figure out a decent way to be a grown-up, with 31 days here, 7 days there, 10 days around, 3 weeks at home, then another handful of weeks somewhere else entirely. I used to think it was bad trying to establish myself when never living in one town for more than a year? HA.

So, you know what? I'm going to sleep when I want to, draw when I feel like it, paint what sounds fun, and spend many, many hours on the couch reading and writing bad poetry. And make a lot of food. I like cooking, and people around here enjoy what I make.

At one point I looked forward at my hedonism marathon and said "I'm going to do as little as possible for as long as possible", but I think that statement is false. Doing as little as possible would probably involve me forcing myself to be bored and unproductive on the internet during periods of time when what I want to be doing is drawing.

Art will get done. Maybe not the arts I expected of myself a month ago, but still arts. And when it doesn't get done, I'm not really going to care.