Where to even begin.

The ceremony.  Yes.  Let me just say that any hatred I had for being forced to stay in Wisconsin two days longer completely dissolved when I arrived.  The actual ceremony wasn’t what made my gut wrench (besides being reunited with my fam), rather, it was the last few miles to the armory.

At least twenty (yes, two zero) police squad cars were lined up waiting to escort us the last few miles.  Every single one of them had their lights and sirens blazing.  It was an amazing site, to say the least.  It made “Ms. No Emotions” over here choke up a bit.  We snaked our way thru residential streets and with all the noise, most of the people came out of their houses to see what the deal was.  It was a forced parade!  Fantastic!

We passed a couple of elementry schools and all of the kids flowed out of the schools when we passed to wave little flags.

But the killer of all killers was an older man (at least of the WWII era) who stood like a rod on the sidewalk in front of his house saluting our bus as we passed.  I choked down the tears for that one.

It’s been hard convincing myself that I’m home now.  After we were released by our commander, I couldn’t get enough hugs from my family and the people in my unit.  Somewhere along the road I had forgotten how good it felt just to be hugged.

I’ve been having a great time the last couple of days visiting family and friends.  Everything is pretty much on hold until I can get the proper number of visits under my belt.  And I’m sure that I won’t start to feel normal again until I can start a new routine.

Here’s a short list of things that have freaked me out in the past week:

1.  No shower shoes.
2.  The tingle on my back from where my weapon used to rest.
3.  The way my body is exhuming toxins from itself. (a.ka. The pimple ranch on my face and crapping at least three times a day.)
4.  Blowing my nose and seeing normal looking boogers.  (Not sand or dirt.)
5.  Missing the people in my unit so badly that it’s threatening ulcers.

 

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