Epilogue (Part the First) ...

Before I start, I would like to commend the people working at the Delta counter at Reagan Airport for their ability to go on break. They make Houdini look like an amateur. Good thing I arrived early. Also, if you ever approach security and there are three lines, with the middle being slightly longer than the others, take the middle line. Trust me.

Now…

It has been almost 6 weeks since my last post.
Don’t worry…everyone is ok.

Spc. and Mr. are quasi-settled in their new digs outside the capitol. There are boxes in semi-orderly stacks throughout the house and neatly folded (really!) stacks of packing paper located strategically throughout.

What follows will be a stream-of-conscience ramble that will cover the last days of Boot Camp for Spc. McFlute and the weeks that have followed. My next post will redefine the purpose and direction of this blog. I will write it when I figure out what that will be.

I left you in Mississippi. I’m sorry. What a lame place to be left hanging.
On Wednesday, June 3, I met Spc. McFlute’s parents in the Atlanta airport. For those of you who have never been to the Atlanta airport, my advice is to avoid flying American, Delta, and Air Tran. You will most likely be routed through Atlanta, even if travelling from London to Paris.
The hookup was strangely smooth. The folks were where the airline said they would be when they said they would be there. Who would have thought!

Side note: Women (and men) over 40 shouldn’t wear short skirts, and people in ships shouldn’t throw stones.

Mr. Spc. McFlute and the folks made the quick trip from Atlanta to Columbia,SC (the site of Spc. McFlute’s temporary imprisonment) and settled in to a large, partitioned, hotel room. It wasn’t time for bed, so we drove down to Fort Relaxin’ to TP Spc. McFlute’s barracks.
A word to the wise: If your wife is in Basic Training and you decide to TP her barracks don’t tell the guard (civilian guard, incidentally) at the main gate what your real reason is for going on base.

Side note: This feels like a different lifetime. Having had the Spc. around for the past number of weeks has almost made it seem like she never left.

At any rate, the decision was made to get some sleep.

The following day (Thursday, June 4, if you’re keeping track) was Family Day. This day was designed as the final test for the new soldiers. They were given limited freedoms during the day, only to have them snatched away at sunset. The McFlute family’s Family Day experience was indescribable. I’m sure you can only imagine the delicate emotional balance one must walk on a day where one will see one’s wife for the first time in over 2 months, meet several men whom one would like to maim, or at least kill, listen to and pretend to applaud speeches given by the very men and women whose incompetence has caused discomfort and suffering for said wife (who now knows how to kill you five different ways in each time zone), and keep one’s in-laws from running onto the field to meet the little girl who can now also kill them in the same number of ways in all the time zones (disclaimer: 3.5 ways are illegal in the Mountain Time Zone, unless you are married). After dealing with/suppressing all that emotion, we had a pretty good day. The day included a picnic by a lake, ice cream at the PX, a bus tour/nap, and a dinner that was supposed to be fancy but would have only passed the fancy test if you were from Oklahoma. This day ended with more misdirection from the SEIP participants. Who would have guessed…

The following day (Friday, June 5) was graduation day. The folks and myself were accompanied by a friend (and now colleague) for this august (not) occasion. Graduation was not as interesting as the Family Day presentation. Family Day began with the soldiers running towards the stands through colored smoke, guns blazing. Those who survived (we all did) were treated to speeches that made you wish you hadn’t. It turns out that it doesn’t take brains to become an officer in the military. Not that some officers aren’t smart.
There is still hope for you, though.
At any rate, graduation eventually ended and the soldiers were eventually released. We were eventually able to leave the base and dine in style at Panera Bread. After depositing our friend (who later in the story will emerge as a central character, as soon as I remember the semi-clever name I gave her) Spc, Mr., and Mom and Dad made our way north for dinner and to send the in-laws home.
In all honesty, their visit was too short. We would have loved to see more of them. It didn’t hurt that they brought cookies.

Saturday and Sunday found the McFlutes taking the long way to Washington DC. Along the way we managed to find a friend in Norfolk (if you think Spc. McFlute had it bad you should hear his story) , a massage, and a bear on the side of the road.

Find out more about the McFlute's week in the Capitol on the Army's dime next time...

Git 'er done!

Mr. Spc. McFlute here, writing from the Days Inn in Forest, MS, on the way to Fort Jackson to spring Spc. McFlute from IET.
As it turns out, they are planning to release her around the time that I am planning to arrive. This should work out well for all concerned. Spc. McFlute, in a 40 minute phone interview on Sunday, says that looking back it doesn’t seem so bad, as long as she doesn’t look too closely.
The “Victory Forge” field exercise turned out to be kind of a dud. Spc. McFlute spent a lot of time trying not to fall asleep. There were two marches of approximately 5500 miles (total), but by this point walking is just walking to a hardened bandswoman like Spc. McFlute. 5 miles? 55 miles? 550 miles? 5500 miles? No difference.
Spc. McFlute was finally able to relinquish her weapon to the proper authorities, after giving it a proper cleaning. Twice. She reports that it is strange not to carry an M-16 everywhere she goes. The connection wasn’t very good, but I think I heard something about feeling vulnerable without an M-16 OR a flute.

The next 10 days promise lots of action.
Thursday is “Family Day.” I have been looking forward to watching a demonstration of “Army Skills” (pretending to apprehend a van of Arab looking actors), and of course to seeing Spc. McFlute. According to the brochure that the Army (through the miracle of subcontracting…they had to find someone who could read and write) sent a few weeks ago she will be granted an on-base pass for the entire day. If all goes well, we (Mr. Spc. McFlute, Mom and Dad Spc. McFlute) will also get to see the platoon get a final (hopefully) smoking at the end of the pass.
Friday is graduation day. Again, if all goes according to plan, we should be able to take Spc. McFlute away, for good this time, before noon. We are also looking forward to the company of SSG Redhead Violin, who will be on tour to Fort Relaxin’.
Saturday and Sunday are travel days, hopefully with a little bit of R n’ R mixed in.
Sunday night Spc. and Mr. McFlute will arrive in the Capital for a week-ish of orientation at Fort Oscar Myer Wiener. A week after graduation Spc. McFlute will finally head back to the Big D for a whirlyball-wind few days of visiting, packing, fluting, and moving.

Whew!

Onward, Upward

Long time, no post. Just remember, no news is good news.

Spc. McFlute is 15 days from graduation. 14 days from Family Day. 13 days from DBFD (day before Family Day). 12 days from...

Spc. McFlute continues to spread cheer and encouragement everywhere she goes and to be a light in a fairly dreary place. In fact, I am told (by Spc. McFlute, no less) that at a recent "Kumbaya Session" her peers expressed appreciating for her good attitude and her sticktoitiveness (not a word). When pressed for a complaint the best they could muster was "You don't swear enough, #*^$%#@."

Monday, Spc. McFlute brought the final PT Test (FPTT for you military types) to its knees. By to its knees, I mean to say that she passed and not by the skin of her teeth. What a relief to have that behind her! Her last big obstacle will be "Victory Forge." I expect this to last from Saturday to Friday. Essentially, Victory Forge is a lot of running around in the woods shooting things, with a few obstacle courses and some ambushes thrown in for good measure.
As I understand it (always dangerous...sometimes I think things would run more smoothly if the folks at Fort Relaxin understood the running of the program the same way I do) , the final few days will be full of paperwork and anticipation.

Spc. McFlute constantly asks me to pass along her gratitude for the torrent of cards and letters she continues to recieve and for the thoughts and prayers that she knows are thought and said on her behalf. The support of friends and family has made this experience bearable for both of us.

Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot...

...left foot, right foot. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Re....

That's how it feels from my end, anyway.
For Spc. McFlute it is probably more like "LEFT, LEFT, LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT. LEFT, RIGHT (&%#@@&^)LEFT, LEFT (&^%#^%$#)RIGHT (**&^$#^&%@%@)...."

Get it? People in the Army yell a lot, have limited vocabularies, and have trouble putting one foot in front of the other
(This doesn't apply to SSG. Horn-Stallion, SSG Bone-Star, and 96.3% of the soldiers that I personally know or will meet in the next few months).

 

Now that I have that out of my system put that out there for later elaboration, on to the news of the day.

The Rockets win in convincing style!!
(I won't be convinced until they do it two more times).

Also, Happy Mother's Day, Mom (and moms). If you haven't called your mom yet, and you live on the West Coast, I hope she does too.

The news from Spc. McFlute has been sparse. Today I was graced with a phone call that lasted all of 52 seconds, and for the last 12 seconds there was a woman in the background (a Self-Esteem Improvement Program participant) yelling "Yo time up! You bess hang da phone-dup!"
Cleary, an attractive and articulate woman who is not working through any frustrations from a neglectful childhood or current frustration at her position in life or lack of friends.
The information that I received indicated that Spc. McFlute had information to pass on to me (Mr. Spc. McFlute, at your service, unless you actually need something, much like Army recruiter and personnel officers) regarding her exit from Initial Entry Training. Spc. McFlute indicated that because her phone time for Mother's Day (there are no mothers in the Army, only...nevermind) was severely curtailed, she would be enclosing said information in a letter that she would drop in the mail on Monday morning.
Excellent! That letter will probably be here to greet her when she arrives in the home city of the 2009 NBA Champions (as long as the Mavericks are those champions...) on or around June 14. I am confident in making this prediction because I received a letter on May 9 that was written on April 30, posted on May 1, and postmarked on May 6. Spc. McFlute sent that letter "overnight," so I did a little math, carried the 3, and arrived at the conclusion that a normal letter would take between three and four weeks to travel a distance that could be walked in one or two weeks.

Spc. McFlute should have finished the second of three phases this week (I would include a link to show what WHITE PHASE consisted of, and what BLUE PHASE entails, but it looks like the Army forgot to pay the Chinese again for their domain rights and the Fort Jackson website is down again) and will be (I assume) moving on to the third and final phase. Spc. McFlute qualified on the shooting range and continued to improve at her PT. The BLUE PHASE includes two overnighters (the first starts tomorrow, from what I could hear over the wounded SEIP participant yelling in the background, and is three days of maneuvers in the field and the second will be in two weeks and lasts an entire week), the PT test, and graduation (God willing).

Spc. McFlute, from what I can gather, is still physically doing fine but is getting pretty frustrated with the inconsistency in the allowance (and promised allowance) of liberties and in the application what she was led to believe were the standards in decorum, excellence mediocrity, and personal interaction. Nothing shady is going on (that I am aware of) but the SEIP participants are extremely inconsistent in the ways that they instruct.
I hope that there is some kind of law against SEIP participants becoming parents, but the following exhortation from Paul the Apostle can be applied to all of those in positions of authority:

Fathers, do not provoke your children, so they will not become disheartened. (Col. 3:21)

Now, if someone would just teach those SEIP SOB's how to read...

I think that I have done a pretty good job of hiding my frustration in this post, but, seriously, I find this process to be pretty frustrating. I am (very occasionally) convicted, however, that God is sovereign, and I am dumb.
Because of my faith, it is not logical to worry or be angry, yet often my first reaction to frustrating situations and news is anger, rather than confidence. I have confidence that Spc. McFlute and I are in the place (places, unfortunately) that God would have us be at this stage of life and that we have good things to look forward to. We also will be given the strength, patience, love, ninja skills, or whatever is necessary to cope, to His glory, with whatever situation we may be put in or through (hopefully, through).
Mr. Spc. McFlute would do well to keep this in mind and react based on faith and reality rather than fear and emotion.

Uphill, both ways...

Today was a good day.
We are about one month away from graduation (God willing), over the halfway point, and suddenly the SEIP participants have figured out where the phones are.
That's right.
9 minutes and 58 seconds of uninterrupted (except by static from the ancient pay phone) conversational bliss. Spc. McFlute also talked to her mother today.
There are still a number of things that have to happen, including the dreaded PT test in a couple of weeks, but at least things are happening now!
This week Spc. McFlute qualified on her M16A2, which means now she will move on to grenades, Anti-Tank guns, and the 50 caliber machine gun (the thing that is mounted on the back of the Hummer in Halo). Color me jealous!

Spc. McFlute has confirmed that she is indeed happy and healthy and that her blisters are healing/have healed. There are several long marches in the next few weeks so that is welcome news. Additionally, Spc. McFlute's roommates have shown themselves to be very encouraging to each other, which is an answer to prayer. She says that many of the female rooms are not as fortunate as her room.

This is a quick one, because there is nothing to complain about today.

I will leave you with this question:
Why were the first 25 years of life without my wife so much easier than the last 6 weeks?

No news is...

...still no news.

Yikes! It has been a while since the last post. I guess time got away from me, which I think is good.

As the title implies, I haven't heard from Spc. McFlute in the last several days, which means that this blog will be entirely political I might finally accomplish my goal of a short post!

The Roundup

The most recent news (written 21 April) indicates that Spc. McFlute is doing as well as or better than expected. We really weren't sure what to expect, so I am glad that she is adapting so well-ish.
Spc. McFlute is (as of last week) in the White Phase, which means shooting guns, blowing up tanks, running grenade assault courses...the fun stuff!
She has written that so far her shooting has gone well. So well, in fact, that last Monday the Self Esteem Improvement Program participant (Drill Sergeant or DS, for short) had Spc. McFlute spend most of Monday coaching her fellow recruits. This amounted to lots of walking back and forth on her blistery feet, then doing a trash sweep (more walking) at the end of the day.
Spc. McFlute also had to go to "sick call" (long, Army-esque (inefficient) lines full mostly of sick or hurt people who are seen by DS' as slackers and weaklings) a week ago Saturday. She reported that her blisters had blisters and were turning black and blue (photo). She didn't want to go to sick call, but was required to by her platoon guide (a recruit who is either on a power trip, or learning to be an effective leader, or both...not sure what this guide is actually like).
A number of you received mail from the Specialist that was written during this waiting period.
The end result, other than the mail, was that Spc. McFlute was given a tub and some powder to use to soak her feet each evening (for the infection...see the link above) and permission to wear tennis shoes for a few days instead of boots. The word on the street is that wearing tennis shoes has made life much more pleasant.

Who Is That Masked (Wo)Man?

Spc. McFlute has noted (in a pleased, self-satisfied manner) that she is pleased with the results of PT on her body. There is some slimming here, some tightening there, and in general, an aura of "I could kick your butt to Toledo and back if I wanted to, but I'm in a good mood" when she writes about PT.
She has also indicated a shift in attitude towards PT. She looks forward to it! I guess when there are few positives, one clings to the least of the negatives? At the McFlute household, we are choosing to view it as a paid gym membership that came with a free (albeit somewhat socially awkward) trainer.
Aren't you all jealous now?

Special thanks to the Mrs. Clarinet lady and family for some laughs, dinner, and a muffin!

...but HER aim's getting better.

Wouldn't you know it...the very day that I post saying that I hadn't heard much, I get FIVE letters from Spc. McFlute. The next day I even got a five minute phone call. Now I am expecting everything to relate to "five," somehow. For instance, the $5 footlong that I plan to have for lunch...

Overall, Spc. McFlute seems to be in the middle of a rough patch physically and mentally, but in her letters and phone call the Hope and Joy (and optimism) that form her core were on full display. This is something to be thankful for!

The Phone Call that Almost Wasn't

Spc. McFlute said on Sunday that she hopes (but won't count on) that she will be able to call on Sunday afternoons from here on out. That being said, I almost missed her the first time she was allowed to call. It all started at birth...and then a number of years later, on a recent Sunday afternoon, I was on the phone with Mom and Dad McMaiden-Name (Spc. McFlute's parents...get it?). In the back of my mind, I was hoping for a call from Spc. McFlute, so I had the McCell Phone close by as I reviewed the contents of the novel that Spc. McFlute sent in five separate chapters with Mom and Dad McM-N. Mom McM-N and I decided that we wanted McGoogle (Google) to show us a satellite image of Spc. McFlute's barracks, so off to the computer I went. As we were McGoogling the satellite, my McCell Phone started to ring, and I started to run. Through the door, over the trombone, around the alto trombone, underneath the euphonium, got on the bike, rode past the golf clubs, leapt from the bike...and the phone stopped ringing. I looked at the number and didn't recognize it, which means that it was Spc. McFlute. Of course, I was devastated AND had a big mess to clean up AND laundry to fold (unrelated), all without the help of Spc. McFlute.
Not to worry.
Either someone was kind to Spc. McFlute, or she was very sneaky, or both, because the phone rang again!
As I picked up my aching, dripping body off the floor, I looked at the number.
I didn't recognize it. My heart leapt!
I answered, and it was!

It was Spc. McFlute, for five whole minutes. I will never speak ill of the Army again, because we got six minutes.

Then the stupid Army made her hang up.

If it Doesn't Make You Stronger, You Will at Least Really Smell.

Spc. McFlute says that the PT (Physical Training...remember what I said about acronyms?) has become more difficult. She was getting kind of cocky and trying to run faster than everyone else, but that has stopped!
For instance, the other day, before breakfast, before any sane person is awake, the SEIP (Self-Esteem Improvement Program) participants had the recruits outside exercising. They began with calisthenics (sit-ups, push-ups, underwire, jumping jacks, blackcats, etc.). After what seemed like 6 hours of that (I think it was about 45 minutes...) the SEIP folks decided that a two-mile run sounded like fun, so off they went.
The SEIP participants seriously misjudged the wake-up time and breakfast wasn't ready yet, so they decided to kill some time (and people?) with uphill sprints. Fun. Then slop breakfast, then a full day of training (including what was technically lunch and dinner).
Oops. Guess they misjudged again, so more PT before bedtime. Being the merciful folks that they are, the SEIP people made the nightcap PT somewhat lighter than the morning blend. Relatively speaking.
Spc. McFlute also got in trouble for the first time. I mean REALLY got in trouble. She was guarding her battle buddy's weapon while said buddy was in the little girl's room (that's not what they call it). Spc. McFlute's particular SEIP participant came along and gave her an instruction to "Follow me..." Well, Spc. McFlute did, but forgot about the extra weapon (he also gave her something to carry).

OOPS!

Well, the end result was a stern talking to (not a euphemism), some extra cleaning, and writing a pretend letter to the battle buddy's parents explaining that their daughter was killed-in-action because Spc. McFlute had failed to secure her weapon.

Do Not Be Anxious About Anything...

Instead, in every situation, through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, tell your requests to God. And the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds
in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:6-7)

This is important for me to remember. Spc. McFlute has been fighting off a cold of sorts for the past couple of weeks and several of her colleagues have developed pneumonia. There have also been various twists, sprains, breaks, breakdowns, and the like. These things will heal, but would probably cause one to miss training for an indefinite period of time. One's care would be provided by the Army.
No...it's ok. You don't need to move. I won't be doing cartwheels. Anything that is "provided by the Army" that is not cash-money doesn't inspire a lot of confidence. Call me crazy, but that's the way I see it.

The thing to remember, though, is that God got Spc. McFlute into this "mess" (if you will) and He will get her out, one way or another.

Jeremiah 29:11 "For I know what I have planned for you,' says the Lord.
'I have plans to prosper you, not to harm you. I have plans to give you a future filled with hope. ¹²When you call out to me and come to me in prayer, I will hear your prayers. ¹³When you seek me in prayer and worship, you will find me available to you."