waiting games

I don't think I've had a more stressful week in as long as I can remember, and let me tell you I've had some pretty stressful weeks in the past! I should probably clarify: when I say week, I really mean from last Thursday morning at 8 until now, Tuesday night at 7:15. And my "week" won't stop there, oh no it will keep on being stressful until we get that wonderful, horrible phone call. I should probably start off by giving some background to my story. It's Sunday night and we are in bed attempting to fall asleep when all of a sudden "Forever Young, I want to be forever young...." starts blaring out of Brandon's phone. Brandon switches into military mode the second he answers the phone. When he finally hangs up he explains to me that there is a massive wildfire that started at Camp Williams and everyone might be getting called back down to help fight it. Not even 5 min. later Forever Young starts playing again, this time a different person calling for the exact same thing. We waited patiently for the next day or so to hear word and for Brandon to get called to come and help out. Now its Thursday morning, I am just about ready to head out the door to my 2nd grade classroom practicum and Brandon is just about to get out of bed to get ready for school when yet again his phone starts ringing. It's the military, at this time we are both expecting it to be about going to fight the fire, we couldn't have been more wrong. I could tell it was something more serious by the tone of his voice, all rough and deep. When he got off the phone Brandon informed me that the 144th (his unit that is currently deployed to Afghanistan) is in need of two more medics and there are only 4 medic to choose from. Whoever is chosen will be deploying in the next two to three weeks. Great! Our wedding is in 22 days and he very well could be leaving before then :( Needless to say I was a wreck, here I am about to go into a classroom full of second graders and I've just had my whole life shaken up turned upside down and dumped off a cliff! As soon as I got out of class we met up and started talking about the pros cons and the possibility of him actually leaving. I was thinking okay our chances of him staying are kinda good until he informed me that one of his friends just finished his chemo treatments and he is un-deployable for 6 months. Wonderful, now he has a 33.3% chance of staying. My hopes are dwindling but there is still a little light in my heart. Well there was until he tells me one of the other kids has a messed up leg and doesn't move very well, perfect. And then he continues to tell me that he is the ONLY one of the remaining three that passed his pt test during the past drill, and not only did he pass it, he KILLED IT! 300 is a perfect score and Brandon (being the stud he is) passed with a 319. Thursday was a day filled with tears, frustration, anger, excitedness (for him!), confusion and eventually acceptance. We made lots of phone calls to family and friends letting them know the possibility of the situation which ended up with more questions than answers, tears, and love. During his phone call we were told that we would know final decisions by Monday at the latest. Perfect, a whole weekend of wondering and not knowing. We made plans to go down and see some of our family. Surprisingly the weekend was mostly positive we got to be with family, hold the baby, play with the kids, wrestle and fight with siblings and have a good relaxed time for the most part. Finally Monday came around. We woke up and got up to school by 5:45 for Brandon's first class. We spent the whole day waiting, looking at the phone, begging for a phone call. I'm pretty sure we even yelled at it a couple of times. Brandon finally got a call and all they had to say was, "we have no information".  Back to the waiting games for us....