2nd Phone Call!

Matt called this evening, just before 7pm. I was walking home from the mail box (ours is quite a walk away) and looking at an airplane wishing he were on that an on his way home when the phone rang. It took me a moment to register that it was his number again.

The first thing he wanted to do was wish Emmaline a Happy Birthday. I put the phone on Speaker and held it up to her. He started singing and she got the biggest grin on her face.

He told me that he asked yesterday if he could call home because it was his daughter's birthday and he caught a lot of flak for it. I just thought that was very perfect of him to risk getting yelled at so he could be there for his daughter's day. He was told no right away but this morning, as they were telling the schedule they mentioned that everyone would get 15 minutes and Matt nearly jumped out of his socks!

I will try to recall everything I can but there is no guarantee its all in the right order.

Matt said he has recieved some job counseling and his top choice was helicopter maintenence. I don't remember what he said his other job choices were- I was so focused on his voice that I didn't pay enough attention! oops! He hasn't had the chance to make a wish list for our move because he is going to be assigned to his job before he can make that wish list.

I've been sending him really long letters (generally around 11 pages) and its made other guys jealous. I guess they've joshed that I write novels to him. He was so glad to get other letters from family as well, they really help his confidence.

As he mentioned in the letter I posted about, he was sick the first night and didn't sleep at all. Right now he is getting over a cold. He said its common for everyone to be sick because of the high level of stress on top of the germs that everyone brings from everywhere.

He said that during the past several weeks he has only slept through one night. He said that when he is allowed to sleep then he sleeps well but generally he is up for drills or guard stuff and such. I know when we were dating he would only get 6-7 hours of sleep a night and he somehow managed to survive (probably because he was twitterpated:) but I'm not sure how the chunked-up sleep is affecting him now. Well, he does have the cold and that probably is part of the result.

In the letter he wrote he mentioned that his group has been doing so poorly that they are threatening sending them back to 0 week. The update- he says that his group has really pulled things together the past few days. They have a reward for the group who is the best- they are the warrior team. As a reward they get an extra day pass off base. Oh how wonderful would that be?! At the begining of the week they got 0 points for messing up on an activity when they got the directions wrong and that caused problems. But! a few days ago they ended up getting 100% on a drill that actually pulled them in the lead for the warror team award! I know he still has several weeks to go but it would be so great to see him win that award!

I asked if he had any baby name ideas but he said no but he liked several of the ideas I sent him. He didn't mention any specifically. But he did say that he reads my letters then scans them and highlights what he wants to respond to. He gets about 15 minutes every night to write so he grabs my letter and responds to whatever he can in that time. Hopefully he'll respond to my name ideas in his next letter.

The frustrating thing about our phone call was that he had to call back 3 times! The first two calls- at exactly 7 minutes there was a click and he became so quiet I couldn't hear him barely at all. He was able to hang up and call back both times but I panicked thinking that he'd be told that he couldn't call back at all. Ultimately we ended up talking about 18 minutes (according to my phone clock) and they were wonderful minutes.

If I remember anything else from the phone call I'll post another blog. Yeah! Matt called!