The Little Things

Yesterday was such a relaxing day... exactly what I needed for the first full weekend of this deployment! I even took Jared and Lillia to the Hershey Bears Hockey game last night! They were so well behaved (as usual) and the bears won big (5-1) against the Rochester Americans.

I will be honest though, the realities of deployment were starting to get to me yesterday. I hadn't heard from Andrew since Wednesday night when they left Manas and I had no idea when to expect communication again. I never thought I'd say this, but that was one nice thing about Ranger School... we always knew how many days until our next phone call. Thankfully, the days of Ranger School are long-gone, and now we are are busy facing a new challenge.

I have been battling a cold for over a week and a half so I took some nyquil last night as I went to bed. I wrote a quick email to my soldier and then decided to check facebook before finally hitting the hay. As all facebook users know, it's like a monster that sucks you in. There is no "quick facebook visit". I don't know what it is about the site, but it's impossible to just log-on for a minute or two. So during this late-night facebook visit, I got a chat message from one of Andrew's friends who deployed the day before him. The nyquil was kicking in at this point, and if it was anyone other than someone who could give me information about Andrew, I definitely would have just shut the computer down and gone to bed.

I am so glad I didn't! After saying hi, Smith (Andrew's buddy) asked if I had anything to say to Andrew because he was standing right behind him! I was so excited I just said "hiiiiiiii honey!" Of course the wireless internet in the house picked that exact moment to quit working. I was so frustrated but after running around in a circle with the computer trying to find the signal (there's a nice mental image for you- and as if that's really how it works) I got finally got the wifi signal back. In less than a minute of having no signal I got the following messages from Andrew:

Hi babe!
I'm gonna call you tomorrow from our next place
Thing are going well here
I'll tell you all about it later, but I'm gonna let Smith get back to his computer. 
Love you lots babe!

By the time I got back, Smith was back online, but it was so good to hear from Andrew. In normal circumstances I would have been really bummed to have missed actually messaging with Andrew, but after 4+ days of no communication I couldn't have been happier... and boy, did I have a good hard sleep last night! It's amazing what a little "hello" from someone who loves you can do. Every little snippet I get from Andrew is a gift at this point, and honestly I'll be perfectly happy to just get an "I love you" ever few days. (Although, I won't lie, I am really looking forward to that call from his next place tomorrow! I can't wait to hear all the details of what's been going on in the past week or so!)

One more little thing: 1 week down about 51 to go!