Monday Missives

It's a little harder to write a weekly wrap-up from Alec's letters because there haven't been any letters.  It's not that he's a bad son, really.  It's just that this training is a little more laid-back than basic training was, and he gets to call home.  In the evenings.  Whenever he wants to.  Oh, I love hearing his voice.  And I love being able to hold a conversation with him, instead of asking a question and waiting a week or two for the answer.

The downside to this is that he usually calls when I am crazy trying to make dinner.  Not to self:  be less crazy during dinner-making time, which you should be anyway, and a phone call won't be a problem.  And also that after I get off the phone I don't remember as much of what we said.  And sometimes it's hard to hear what he is saying so we do a lot of "what?" and "say that again" which I'm sure gets very annoying.

Anywho...

He's settling into his new place quite well.  He was chosen to be a leader of his platoon.  I think it's called a PG.  Or a GP.  Patrol Goon?  Maybe Patrol Guard.  That sounds about right.  He does have an aptitude for leadership, and I would imagine that the sergeants, having done this so many times, are pretty quick to pick that up.  So my boy is the boss.  Which could be good, except that he hated it.  He and his fellow PG - a gal who can't shout - would get the orders from the sergeants and relay them to their platoon.  But no one listened.  They have 60-plus soldiers to keep in line, and it wasn't working for them.  He was very frustrated about it, to the point of trying to figure out how to get out of the leadership position without outright quitting.  But it worked out (I think a dressing-down from the sergeants did the trick) and everything is peachy again.

He's learning how to be a quartermaster.  Read: cook.  He's enlisted in the National Guard, and this was the job in his unit with the shortest training time.  You can always do more training and change jobs later.  Besides, he doesn't mind cooking.  And I'm ok with that.  He's done a bunch of class work, as well as hands-on in the kitchen.  They like cleaning up at the end of the day (eating whatever they made.).  The other day, it was meatloaf.  He said it makes the dinner time better, to have already eaten and then get to eat more.  They also learned how to use knives.  I'm imagining something like this scene:  

Yeah, I'm sure he will be awesome like that.