The kids and I used this tool during the second half of Ranger School, and Jared and I affectionately changed the name to "donut of WOOHOO!" because I felt "misery" was just too depressing. That was when I was only a few weeks away from seeing Andrew. Deployments are totally different, this sucker is my donut of misery.
Why, you may ask, is it called a "donut"? Welp, see for yourself: (To Go numbers have been removed along with everything that could possibly have anything to do with OPSEC, even though those to go numbers really don't mean anything since I just made up a homecoming date, willy-nilly, around the 1 year mark)
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| Click on the image to make it bigger and see the actual numbers of what we have behind us |
See that iddy-biddy strip of yellow along the bottom? Yeah, the one that says "are we there yet?" That is what I am getting so excited about this evening! It used to be red, meaning we had a whole bunch of this baby still to go and we were really still in the beginning phases. But now, it is yellow! I thought we were still for-ev-er away from yellow; in fact I had completely forgotten that yellow was (eventually) going to happen. But now it IS yellow! We're in the heart of this deployment, we are getting there!
Every few weeks, that little saying changes, the first day it said something like "Still a long, long, long way to go..." (talk about misery) but now, it's slowly becoming more cheerful!
And what the Donut doesn't know is that I get to cheat and see my man before that bottom stripe (and the whole donut) turns green. Midtour Leave (R&R) will truly be a blessing, and with under 6 months to go until that date (still don't have a date locked down yet- and we won't know for sure when it will be until Andrew's boots are on the ground in front of me) I am finding myself day dreaming of those two weeks more and more lately. I simply can't wait. I'm starting to get giddy at the thought of it, which I realize is still completely ridiculous at this point.
Also another fun fact I learned when studying my donut tonight: A whole nine and a half million seconds have passed since Andrew has left. Piece of cake, right?! ... eh, right?
Love your blog, keep on writing, I found your site while looking for a donut of misery earlier. I don't have Excel, I ended up finding an online one at Donut of Misery which I really love but I can't use it on my phone, maybe that's a good thing though :)
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