Finally!!!!

I'm not superstitious nor and I a big believer in premonitions...BUT...Chris didn't call yesterday. I carried my damn cell phone with all day and when I went to bed at 5 PM (day shift, up at 3:30 AM), I tried to put my phone so it would wake me (no easy feat, once I'm out, I'm really out)on the off chance he called late.

He didn't, so I figured maybe they got in trouble and were denied phone privileges.

Today when I got to work and being it's one of those "kinda holidays", I closed the gates and decided to leave my phone on the desk. (I had a phone stolen out of the office a couple of years ago, so it usually goes in my locker.) It was one of those feelings of "Well, he works for the gov't, maybe they'll consider it a holiday and he could get his phone".

At 12:42 PST my phone went off, my heart raced a couple of beats, then while reaching for the phone, I'm thinking "It's probably some new bill my wife left me with", I look at the display and it says "CHRIS"!

That was the end of my shift report, I was 2/3's of the way through, but the rest could wait.

I got to talk to him for about an hour. He's doing well, put on 10 lbs., got the hell beat out of him with pugil sticks last Friday and loved it, Tomorrow he goes to the range and tries to qualify as Expert Marksman (two more on target this time and he makes it 36 out of 40, but he's going for 40/40), Friday they get so shoot heavy weapons... .40 machine gun, SAWs, .50 Machine gun and something else I didn't recognize, and he's just short on all the PT stuff they have to pass, but he's still got two weeks to go to get by those.

For a kid whose diet was very "selective", he says he likes the army chow, mostly. There are some things he looks at and won't touch, so he just grabs veggies bread and rice and figures he'll eat more tomorrow when there is something he likes.

God I miss him! Eight months ago, I wanted him to get a job and move out. Now I'm counting the days and pennies so I can fly all the way across country to be able to spend a couple of days with him at his graduation from Boot. Then the Army takes him back for another 6 weeks for training in his specific field. After that he gets 2 weeks off to come home before posting.