D-Day Plus One

After saying goodbye yesterday, I was expecting today to be especially tough; however, it proved to be a relatively good day. It started with a 4am wake-up call from Tom, letting me know that he was at his first layover, and it was so wonderful to hear his voice. After lazing around this morning and early afternoon, I had the treat of talking to Tom online through Yahoo messenger while he was at his second layover. This layover was abroad, and we were pleased to find that the call feature worked very well- we were able to talk for about a minute before he had to turn it off due to a lack of privacy. (Literally the whole terminal could hear that we were talking, poor guy. Thanks, hun, for putting up with my silly requests!) Hopefully the Internet connection in Iraq will be able to carry the signal and we'll be able to chat often.

He's now on the final leg of today's journey, on a plane between somewhere in Europe and Kuwait. I'm expecting to hear from him again after he arrives, so hopefully I'll be able to update with that info again later.

As for me, tonight I'll be enjoying the Grey's Anatomy premiere and preparing to go back to work tomorrow. I'm almost looking forward to it, bratty kids and all. Seeing as I spent most of my day watching the computer to see if Tom would log on, I think working will be a more productive use of my day.

One last thing: military wives use something called the "Donut of Misery" or the "Deployment Donut" to keep track of homecoming in a way that doesn't violate OPSEC. Since we can't say "he's coming home in 43 days," the donut tracks the percentage of the deployment that is complete. Here's a snapshot of today's donut. Pretty depressing, huh?