Jeff Gilbert: Marine of the Year

Congrats to Jeff, who won the Marine of the Year award at this year's Marine Ball. The knife Jeff is so drunkenly and safely holding in his mouth was part of his prize. Good idea, U.S. military--give drunk people knives. Oh, and the party favors were flasks. No, I'm not kidding.

I'm proud of you, Jeff. I am not proud of how you got drunk right afterward and tried to push me down on the dance floor while singing Kanye West's "Golddigger," but hey, at least you had a good time, whether you remember it or not. But I AM proud of the award; you earned it with your hard-working, patriotic, elderly self.

For those of you who are concerned that I could have had a better time at the Marine Ball, well ... yeah, I could have, but I did have fun in the hours before Jeff fell off his already-precarious perch on the ledge of sanity and started pouring drinks over his head. And anyway, he's promised me a make-up date, so he wins my forgiveness.

Plus, he's promised to be better next time. He can change, people. HE CAN CHANGE. He didn't mean it. He's a good guy deep down. I could leave anytime. Honest. If I wanted to I totally would. You just don't see the good side of him. YOU JUST DON'T SEE. He ... he secretly treats me like a queen. Just not, you know ... in public.

(Click on the photo to browse through other pictures in the set. For best results, click on the first one in the set and view in order, with captions. If you don't like browsing Flickr from within my site, just right-click the photo and open the link in a new window.)

It's baaaaaack.

No, I'm not blogging again. But I wanted to call your attention to the fact that the journal archives are once again available.

I removed them months ago because I was applying for a job. I was worried that a potential employer would Google me and discover that I had once written several paragraphs about how Jesus would play SSX Tricky on the Playstation. I also called my husband my b--tch and shared my plan to force him to wear a pink apron.

You can see how this would be detrimental to my chances of a job interview. (Unless the job interviewer was totally unspeakably awesome, just like me. Then I would be in like Flynn.)

Anyway, the good news is that I am now happily self-employed, and I never even meet my clients. So let the JOURNAL ARCHIVE PARTY BEGIN.

Enjoy. If you have never read it before, I suggest you start at the beginning, or you will have no idea what's going on.

Oh, and if you're wondering ... we're doing great. :)

Thank you and goodnight

The last album is up. You can access it here or on the photos page.

That's it, then. I wish you all the best, and feel free to write me at jenniherself@DELETEyahoo.com (remove DELETE). Enjoy the last album, and keep in touch.

Well, I think that answers THAT

The big question when Jeff came home (OK, there were lots of big questions, but this was the big question for me) was whether I would continue to blog -- not about deployment, or anything related to deployment, but on more ordinary subjects, akin to many of the other blogs out there.

Well, if I had any doubts about having enough time every week to update, every one of them has been proven right at this point. I CANNOT UPDATE. I know a lot of you have really enjoyed this site, which is awesome. I like that you like me. I want to keep you happy. I want your approval and adoration. It's fun to have fans. It's fun to stare at oneself in the mirror, clutching printouts of my traffic reports, murmuring "I am a god, I am a god."

Not that I ever did that.

Some of you are OK with my site abandonment. Others ... well, apparently you REALLY, REALLY loved reading what I had to say. Loved it with the intensity of a thousand suns. I don't want to alarm you, but those others are out there right now with a little voodoo doll of me (complete with a lock of my hair -- hey, where did you get that?), saying chants and putting the little voodoo doll's hands on a little miniature keyboard.

But I have to get real here and admit that I am not the blogger you've been dreaming of. Believe me, I'm as shocked as you are. I read a lot of blogs, and the thought in the back of my silly little head was "I could do that. That doesn't look hard." Well, it IS hard, at least for me. Some bloggers post almost every day, forcing me to conclude that they are in fact genetically mutated superheroes. Posting EVERY day? I don't even have time to brush my teeth EVERY day!

Okay, that was a joke. Maybe.

Anyway, I have a new respect for all those bloggers out there who have kept plugging away for years on end. As for me, it turns out that I only want to talk to all of you when I was struggling through something. I wanted to get away from how my life felt for a half-hour or so and have a conversation with all of you instead. Now that my life is something I actually want to be living, being in it feels wonderful, and I don't want to leave it.

Not only have I not posted anything decent in weeks, I also can't get the last album up. The Last Album is a giant weight on my soul that wakes me up at night. And it's not even that good. The album will go up, and you'll say, "OK, we waited for THIS?!?!" The pictures of Jeff's homecoming total about six pictures altogether, and most of them appear to have been taken by a drunk person. Those were actually taken by my mother, and she wasn't drunk (that I KNOW of), but she was struggling to deal with a massive roiling crowd that made photography pretty difficult.

Anyway, I know you're wondering how Jeff and I are doing. I'll say it simply: We're doing well. I feel lucky, he feels lucky, each doesn't think they deserve the other, and that's the way it should be. I can't promise we'll be able to maintain that lovely balance, but I'm going to enjoy it while I have it.

Not that it's perfect. A few weeks ago, I made a few lists to properly express the situation. I will leave you with those, for now, and I will make another post when I can -- no promises. And I will put that last stupid album up when I can, and that IS a promise, albeit one I may not fulfill until I am sixty years old.

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LIST 1: THINGS JEFF DOES NOW THAT ARE REALLY, REALLY ANNOYING
1. Subtly imply that I need permission to go anywhere. I don't need your permission, chump! I'm the sheriff! Do you hear me? The sheriff!
2. Get mad at me for leaving wet towels and dirty clothing and messy dishes everywhere. What can I say? It's a genetic disorder. You think this is bad? You should have seen the place when you weren't here! Besides, I picked up everything for like eight months, and I thought we were supposed to be switching off or something. Sure, that was a mistake, but quite frankly it's too late now, so SUCK IT UP! Literally. With the Dustbuster. NOW.
3. Talk to me while I am communing with the Internet in a special blogreading mind-meld. All circuits are busy. Try back later. I'll talk to you then. If you're lucky.
4. Whine about how Iraq was so hard. What did you think it would be, a trip to the circus? IT'S A FRIGGING DESERT. I'm pretty sure I knew deserts sucked by the time I was like, four years old, so I'm not sure what took YOU so long. Iraq is dusty? Roasting in summer? Freezing in winter? Full of crappy buildings and primitive structures? My, how surprising! And by "how surprising" I mean "how surprising for nobody but YOU, idiot."
5. Act as if I should let you watch what YOU want to watch on TV just because you haven't gotten to watch TV in a long time. Whose fault is that? See #4 in this list and be quiet.

LIST 2: THINGS JEFF DOES THAT ARE UNBELIEVABLY AWESOME
1. Make me breakfast all the time. Good stuff, too -- french toast (excuse me, FREEDOM toast! Thanks, Congress! Your tax dollars hard at work, ladies and gentlemen!), pancakes, waffles, whatever I want.
2. Secretly reorganize and rethrow my father's entire 50th birthday party last weekend, just because I lost my pictures of his FIRST party (which happened over a month ago) and cried about it. Um, thanks. That really wasn't necessary, but it was terribly romantic. I was actually sort of mean to Jeff about it in a push-you-down-on-the-playground sort of way, because if I wasn't gruff about it, I was going to cry again, into the french toast that Jeff just made me. So instead of crying and hugging him and telling him that it's one of the most amazingly unnecessary nice things anyone has ever done for me, I just shoved him really hard into the gravel pit next to the jungle gym, then pointed and laughed. Figuratively speaking, I mean. Thank you, everyone who helped with that -- it was amazing.
3. When I'm sitting in the tub as it fills up, staring into space and wishing passionately that I were dead (I do this every morning -- this is how much I hate mornings), dart into the bathroom to set a warm mug of cocoa you made for me on the edge of the tub, and then go away again so I can hate my life in peace without your chipper ass getting on my nerves. Then go back to bed, because you actually only got up to MAKE me the cocoa. Yeah, I guess you're all right. For a man, I mean.
4. Forgive me a million times a day for a certain genetic disorder (see List 1, #2). Not that I REALLY need forgiveness, though. Because it's genetic.
5. Believe me when I say that I want to join a gym again, and yes, this time I'll go every day, I really will, I promise. Your ability to have faith in me no matter how many times I've failed in the past is really one of your more beautiful qualities. On one hand, odds are I'm TOTALLY not going to go the gym, but on the other hand, the day you stop believing in me will be the day I stop believing in myself.

LIST 3: THINGS I SHOULD START DOING NOW
1. Um, go to the gym. HAHA!
2. Stop blogging about my life and start living it again, like I used to. Believe it or not, it's WORK to remember how to step away from the computer and actually live life. Now that Jeff is back, there's not time for family, friends, Jeff, AND blogging. Something's gotta go, and it ain't gonna be time with my little nephew, I can tell you that.
3. Finish that friggin' book I've been working on for five years. It's an awesome book. Not that anyone will ever read it, because I'm such a procrastinator that I don't plan on finishing it until like six days before I die. Which will be a problem, seeing as six days is not enough time to get a book approved by a publisher, especially when one is in ill health and planning to die in about six days.
4. Lie in the dark with Jeff discussing everything we plan to do in the next five/ten/twenty/fifty years. It is and always has been our favorite pastime. Most of it isn't going to happen, but that's not really the point -- it's the dreaming part we love. We've had some major planning sessions already, but I want to shut this computer off and pay even more attention to us -- where we want to go, and what we want to do, and how we're going to do it together.
5. Study Kabbalah.*

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*Dude, I'm totally kidding. Not that I have anything against Kabbalah, but if one more celebrity tries to sound smart by talking about Kabbalah like they're the only one who has ever heard of it, I really will have to go on some sort of Hollywood killing spree.

Bear with me

I'm working on the last album. It ain't easy taking pictures of a black room.

HEY ADEKOYA

ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?!?!?!

Exit interview

I interviewed Jeff awhile back as part of a project that was SUPPOSED to be everyone's Christmas present (ummm, yeah right, THAT was a little ambitious of me). I still want to do the project, but who knows how long it will take.*

So while Jeff's answers will still be included in that project, I wanted to share some of them here as well. After all, the goal of this site has always been to make the military experience more accessible to those who are unfamiliar. As you will see below, some of Jeff's answers were interesting (and sometimes amusing, like when I asked him how deployment changed him, and he rambled about his nasty feet). Jeff's fondness for profanity comes shining through as well, but hey, if I was too hard on Jeff for that, I would be a pretty big hypocrite.

Anyway, here goes:

How would you describe a deployment for an individual?
One word: Uncomfortable. Mind you, I realize that we are not nearly as uncomfortable as previous military servicemen and women of the past, because they had a lot less in Vietnam or in WWI or WWII. It was colder, they had less technology. They didn't get to make phone calls, they didn't get to use the Internet. But all in all, the thing that makes it uncomfortable is that you're used to a certain level of lifestyle. You're used to decent food, warm showers, etc. A lot of that stuff is removed. You're cold, you're tired, you work a lot, you don't get to communicate as frequently as you used to, that's what makes you uncomfortable. I'm sure back in the Revolutionary War, you were cold anyway, whether you were deployed or fighting or not. So in some ways it's more uncomfortable now than it was then, because there's a bigger lifestyle change. I'm not saying we have it tougher than Vietnam. We certainly have it easier than previous people did. We have more amenities. But we're uncomfortable, and we've still got it better than anyone ever had. I think today's people are softer than people in the past. People in the past had harder lives.

What has been your favorite thing about deployment?
It ain't here yet. When I get my (butt) home will be my favorite thing about deployment. But so far, my favorite thing here is just the fact that I know for myself that I go to help somebody in a different country -- and hopefully help my country be a safer place. A sense of a fulfillment of a duty, of self-satisfaction. But by far, my most favorite thing will be getting my red-white-and-blue (butt) back home. Also, I am proud of what my wife has done. She's done just as much as I have. She's had to take care of things on the homefront. In my eyes, she's served her country too. And I'm proud that we have done that. There should be a Spouse of Veterans Day. All those people have a hard job at home, really. It's as hard as we have. Bear all that crap and stick with you, that's hard.

How would you describe Iraq to someone who has never been there?
Is s--thole one word or two?

But like anything, if you look around hard enough, there's something good. But (I) ain't found it yet. We are hopefully helping people make things better for themselves. But for me, it's pretty much a s--thole.

What are some bad days you can think of during the deployment?
... Freezing my (butt) off. If anybody knows me, they know I hate being cold. People say, "Oh, thirty degrees, that's not that cold." Sure it isn't, WHEN YOU'RE INSIDE. We're in open air. We're cold. We're freezing. Being wet and cold ... it's not comfortable.

What are some good days you can think of during the deployment?
Getting to do some cool stuff. Those pictures of the EOD missions, those were good days. Taking weapons off the street that won't hurt anybody anymore. Those were good days. That made the whole deployment for me. Getting attached to recon. Yeah, I'm not recon, but it feels like you're recon when you're patrolling with them. I've gotten to see urban warfare, I've gotten to see patrolling in the country, I've gotten to see bombs getting dropped on buildings three blocks away from me ... Making new friends. You get really close with the guys in your platoon and squad, some of them. These are the kind of guys you'll see twenty years from now and be able to laugh about freezing your (butt) off in the back of a truck. You can only talk about it with people who have done it. If they haven't done it, they can't really understand. It's like a love/hate relationship. A lot of it's pretty cool. You hate it, but then you get done and you think, "Wow, that was pretty cool. I'm glad I did that."

Thanksgiving was really cool. It certainly wasn't nearly as good as being home, but we had a great meal. But you ARE family. You work with these people every day. They may get on your nerves just like a brother or sister, and you're annoyed with them, but somebody hits your brother or sister, and you will f--k them up.

Another great day was the Marine Corps birthday. You aren't allowed booze over here, but they gave everybody two beers and a shot of rum. And that's great. It made us feel good.

What are your goals when you come home?
Get my flying job back, and start flying again. Make my house comfortable, make it like how we want it, so we can enjoy that. Enjoy the next two years with just me and the family, mainly me and my wife getting to enjoy some time together before we have kids.

The main thing is (having) a couple of kids and trying to raise them right. That's going to take a lot of work, and a lot of years, and it's really the last goal I have in my life.

What are some things you miss about being home? Certain foods or places? People? (Hint hint, you miss your wife.)
That's right. I miss my wife. I miss my wife more than anything by far. Just lying around with my wife. She makes me comfortable. Like I said, war is uncomfortable. And my wife makes me comfortable.

As far as food goes, just about every goddam kind of normal food that you get to eat and don't think twice about -- nice pizza, good Italian food, Chinese, whatever. We get fed good here. I can't really (complain) about food too much. I miss certain places at home. But we eat good here. Thank you, U.S. taxpayers!

In the field, (the food is) not as good, it's quite different, but it's gotta be a lot better than it used to be.

What is the most afraid you have been so far?
The most afraid by far was the second or third day in Fallujah, when a mortar went off right by our tent. It was loud as (hell), we were all asleep. You could hear the incoming noise and detonation. It was close. I don't know how close, but it was close. I rolled out of the top rack right on top of Bitner, who had rolled out of his rack to get low. For a few minutes, it was like, "Wow, that's f--king scary."

But ... TV desensitizes people. I've had bullets whiz past my position, cause you can hear them. In video games, bullets whiz past you, and that's how it sounds. You're just used to it. It doesn't really bother me now. But the mortar was the first realization of "Holy f--k. I could get f--king killed over here." Obviously, I knew that before. Nobody that I know has been blown up. If somebody got blown up next to me or shot in the head, I would probably feel different. But as of right now, when bullets whiz by, it's just like, "Eh, it's a good thing these guys can't shoot very good."

And their mortars are of inferior quality. They should probably try to get them exchanged or refunded, because they got ripped off.

What would you tell someone thinking of going into the military?
Think (really) long and hard about that. I wouldn't NOT recommend it to somebody, but I would want to make sure they got ALL the information, from ALL angles, of what they're gonna be doing. I don't want them going in with a blind eye, or just on what the recruiter says.

It's a noble thing. I think damn near everyone should serve in some capacity. It doesn't have to be a combatant role, but you should contribute to national defense in some way. YOUR nation's defense. Not in every other country, in everyone else's business. In today's society, and how we're operating, you might really want to think about that decision. We're operating as "we can do whatever we ant, whenever we want." It's something you want to do when you're 18, and something you definitely should do before you're married. Do it while you're free enough to do it. It will broaden your mind.

How has the deployment changed you?
My feet stink like nothing else. They're nasty. They better get (better), or ... I don't know. My feet are beat up. My feet didn't used to be the crusty. They (really) STINK.

How has deployment changed your marriage, both now and in the future?
Well, now it's changed because I don't see my wife ever, and haven't seen her but about 30 days in the last fourteen months, so that kind of sucks. But for me, and for her too I hope, it's made us appreciate each other a lot. It's made us realize, hey, you don't need that big house, that fancy car. If you can afford them, great, but if you're just comfortable -- here we are, back to comfortable again -- if you're with somebody, and you're comfortable, be happy with that. Because it can be uncomfortable.

Fortunately for us, I think we get along well and we're comfortable with a little bit. And good for us. In the future, I don't know. If I get deployed again in the future, that's probably not going to help. But all that will do is push back having kids. So it (angers) the older ladies who want us to have kids so they can have babies around. They'll have to wait a little longer in that case!

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*I'm trying to free up more time for myself. Baby steps. Baby steps.