Currently Chasing: Good Milk

When you are on your way to Disneyland, the hour-long car ride seems to take days. However, when you are on your way to war, the 25 hour plane ride feels like 20 minutes. I’m not even exaggerating. 
After landing in Kuwait my first priority was, what else…Facebook. So I get on there are read status updates. A friend was complaining that a pair of pants she bought were not comfortable. Let me tell you what uncomfortable is. Laying down in powdered sand in the “prone” position with your M4 and trying to see with scratched-up safety glasses and a helmet that keeps falling and hitting the bridge of your nose. That’s comfortable in the biggest un way. 
Another friend of mine sent a message letting me know she was waiting on a male suitor to come by and make sweet love to her all night. Well that’s nice, but I’d much rather go to sleep on the top bunk in my tent and pretend that the light isn’t shining directly into my eyes and burning out my retinas.  Is that the smell of sizzling bacon waking me?  Nope, just eyelid flesh.
After I got off the internet I went into the USO. Cool place. A group of guys were sitting in the middle of the room playing, what else … Call of Duty! Even overseas, virtual war is better than the real thing. 

So we finally leave for Afghanistan. We had to travel in full gear, so you can imagine that we fit in the plane like Lego pieces. No shit, I packed a funnel and a bottle in case I had to pee. I’m not taking any chances.

So, now it’s day five in Afghanistan and no one has tried to sexual assault me. That’s a plus. But there is a lot of negatives to make up for it. 

We live half a mile from a body of water that contains all of our shit. Not our stuff.  Our. Shit.  They call it poo pond. It’s bliss really. Nothing like the smell of burning hot feces in the morning. It stings the nostrils in a “I can now take on the day” way. Can someone courtesy flush already. It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase hot shit. 

Is that the smell of sizzling bacon waking me?  No!

We have an officer in the unit who is addicted to hand sanitizer. Germaphobe! He has given us specific instructions that if he falls in the pond we are to just leave him for dead, 'cause he will never recover. 
And don’t think for a second that naming it something somewhat witty yet completely elementary makes it any more tolerable.
So every morning before I head out I do a check to make sure I have everything I need … Ipod? Check. Sunglasses? Check. Cover? Check. Room key? Check. But I always feel like I’m forgetting something, because I am. Usually my damn Weapon! I can remember my lip gloss in a combat zone, but I can’t remember the one thing that may actually save my life. Typical.
We are here with people from more than 30 other countries. I used to only have to worry about people talking bad about me in another language when I went to the nail shop, now I have to worry about it everywhere. People are always just looking in my direction and talking in a different language. However, “I can’t believe they gave that chick a weapon” sounds really sweet when someone foreign says it. It’s a good thing “pew, pew, pew” (which is the sound my weapon makes) is universal. And can I just say one more thing? With all these countries here, you would think the people of Afghanistan would just throw their hands up and say, Alright, we’ve been assholes. Our bad. We’ll stop. I mean, I don’t like it when one person doesn’t like me, let alone 30 FUCKING countries.
So for now, this is my life. I’m going to go get something to eat. And not bacon.  This time I’m actually going to check the milk. It is supposed to be a liquid right?