1st Lt Prifogle’s Blog

I sit in my office on another Al Asad morning. My Marines are still asleep. The office is quiet for a change, but I know it’s only a matter of a few hours before Marines, Sailors, Soldiers, civilians, just about anyone you can imagine on this base coming or going through our warehouse-office door. I sit and remember I am at war. Then I remember how many of the folks coming through the door are coming just to chat or bring us crack-in-a-can known as Rip Its and Shock Coffee Triple Lattes. I think of all the Marines who we support who don’t come by to ask for anything, just come by to say hello and escape from their jobs for a few minutes and I smile. I enjoy the company the day will bring.

In the early morning I look over the pictures on my computer and on my wall. I miss my family. Rebecca, My Bug, my Paige. I miss the sound of children – the universal sound of hope, beauty, and innocence. I get to work and get distracted before I even start. I open up internet explorer – the biggest time stealer in the world. I need an address so it’s a legitimate query this time. I type in the words “Ould Sod” and the search engine brings ups pages about the local pub back in San Diego. I write the address down and think to myself, it’s already 5:30 I really need to get some work started. I’ve already wasted an hour just waking up. I don’t get to work. I hit the ‘view photos’ link on the page. I look at old pictures of Mick and Tony with funny haircuts and other patrons who have celebrated deaths and births and passing time with a pint of Guinness in hand. It’s more then just a pub it’s a family. I find my girlfriends in the pictures. Bloomsday 2007 pub-crawl. I remember that day. I was fighting with my friend Lisa and she randomly text’d me. Her drunken gibberish forced us to talk again and make up. I remember Jill calling while I was in LA. I laughed at her babbling and listened to her stories of how much fun it was. I was stuck in traffic driving back to my friend’s house after a long day of classes. It was Saturday. I remember being pissed off because I was stuck in traffic and not there having one last pint.

I know the feeling of missing it. Always, missing it. At home I miss dance recitals, piano recitals, birthdays, holidays. With my friends I miss pub crawls, weddings, birthdays, deaths. I go through other picture Albums “The Ould Sod goes to Petco Park,” “Bloomsday 2005” and earlier pictures. I try to remember where I was in June 2005 – Officer Candidate School. I had no idea my life would lead me to a pub in San Diego and then to war to miss it. I look at older pictures on the site. The faces are the same – younger and thinner, but the same jovial smiles. I wonder where I’ll be in another three years. Maybe in San Diego, maybe not. This is the longest I’ve lived in one place since I left home at 18. It’s always been six months here onto the next adventure. Six months there moving again. I’m now 26 years old and still have no desire to stay in one place. I start to think about the friends I made in Scotland. I remember how terrified I was of moving there for six months. I left with a blank passport and two full suitcases and came back with a desire to never ‘settle’. I still keep in touch with my friends although now time has separated us more than distance. I look at my cork board with pictures of my friends from New York City, school, home, San Diego. I miss them all in a way that I hope they are doing what they love at this very moment. I hope when they think of me they don’t worry, but assume I’m having one hell of an adventure. That’s what I think of when I think about them. They must be doing what they love and it keeps them too occupied to keep in touch with me. It’s better to think this way.

I try to get to work again and realize I haven’t emailed Jill in a day and a half. I don’t email my mother but once every few weeks, but Jill keeps me updated on the lives and times of everyone in San Diego and I feel like I’m still a part of it – like I haven’t fallen into the black abyss of deployment – so we write almost everyday.

I write Jill and get back to work. Not too long after I get my focus back my Staff Sergeant walks in from her morning run. I didn’t see her at all yesterday and she says the first thing she says every Wednesday, “Ma’am! I haven’t seen you in days.” I laugh because Tuesdays are filled with meetings and training. She sits down at her desk and calls her girls and her husband. Every morning starts like this.

I start to fall asleep, so I walk outside to stretch my legs and see if the sunrise is worth chasing down to get the perfect photo. I walk back in check to see if Jill is still up and working on the other side of the world – emailing me back equally as distracted. I wait for an update caught between hoping I’ll get a response and hoping her crackberry is turned off and buried under a pile of clothes. I hope she’s at the Sod this very moment having a pint.

Sgt B walks in, “Good morning Ma’am, can you give me a ride to the Headquarters building?” The day has already begun and it’s just past 7.

“I’ll take you Sgt B.” SSgt Sharpe announces from the other corner of my office where she can hide.
I can hear the vehicles outside driving by; 7-tons, armored HMMVW’s, trucks beeping as they pull out of our lot. Yes, another day has already begun. I wonder if someday I will miss this. This quiet hour in the Iraq morning, sharing an office with my SSgt who is more like part of my family now then my chief – I can tell you her daughters’ birthdays and favorite colours. I wonder if I’ll miss watching my Marines trickle in half-awake as the clock ticks closer and closer to 8. If they are here less then five minutes early SSgt Sharpe gives them a look. If they are here at 8 or even a minute late she takes them outside for a ‘counseling’. Will miss trying to catch that perfect sunrise again? The first time I was too busy taking pictures of it to really enjoy it – let me have another one and this time I’ll leave the camera in my wall locker. Will I miss waiting for Microsoft Office to pop up on the corner of my screen with “Jill Klemmens”? I think about all the other places I miss now and how I missed somewhere else while I was there. The irony makes me laugh to myself, because even though I’ll miss this someday I can’t stop myself from missing somewhere else right now. An email pops up from Jill in response to the picture I sent of her on the pub crawl, “Oh geez! I do not need to be on the ould sod website!” I laugh and get back to work. Back to missing the things I miss. “Go have a pint,” I write back and as I hit send realize it’s time to go to the gym – I missed my whole morning.

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