Spring in North Carolina

 Hard to believe I have been out of the loop for a month.  I feel like so much has happened and nothing has changed at the same time.

I am currently in Gastonia NC working a FEMA mission for waterway debris clean up after Helene almost a year ago. I have been here almost 30 days already, going home on Sunday.  I will be back for a couple of weeks and heading out to LA wildfires.  I started out here, was here for a week and got moved to Union Co about 45 minutes from here.  Gaston Co. is well organized and a small operations that moved like a finally oiled machine.  A week in I got moved because they didn't have a tower at the debris dump site and had to use a scissor lift.  The harness was way too big for me so they sent me to a site with a tower built.  It was also a shit show.  I met a lot of great people that I really enjoyed working with, and a few that I wanted to throttle.  It has rained a lot over the last 2 weeks so we have had some admin days.  The first one they had us going to all of the sites they were pulling debris from (TOLS) just to keep us busy.  I knew that they would let us go back to the room once we had checked all of the TOLS but the jackwagons couldn't get their shit together.  I made the mistake of making a list of all of the sites and coordinates and trying to make sense of it all.  This landed me in a supervisor position that I don't want or ask for.  Luckily they got the tower constructed and moved me back to the good county.  

So far this deployment has been pretty sweet though.  One of the contractors at the disposal sites brought his 3 month old puppy with him everyday.  When I was alone at the tower I would go get her and bring her up in the tower and play with her.  She is a cutie.

I moved back to Gastonia on Sunday and as I was driving to the tower I looked up and saw a big fluffy boy running down the middle of a curvy mountain road.  Traffic had stopped but no one was doing anything.  I just opened my car door and yelled for him to get in my car.  And just like that I had a dog. He had a collar on and was dragging a leash but had no tags.  He is one of the most stunning dogs I have ever seen.  I ended up taking him to a pet store and they held him in a grooming cage  and called the non emergency police line.  Someone from animal control picked him up later that day.  I was actively making plans to drive 16 hours one way to come back and get him but alas his family found him.  I am glad he is back where he belongs but I really wanted him to belong with me :(

It worked out for the best though since I am only going to be home for a few weeks before I turn around and redeploy.  

The worst part of getting moved back and forth is that I made a tattoo appointment and had to do some finagling to get it worked in.  It is a lot bigger than I planned but it turned out great.

Since I have been gone, Dennis started a new job as a facility manager for habitat for humanity. I think he really likes it.  He is in his element.  The second day there the loading dock was about to flood and he engineered some pump from donated parts and saved the day.  I know he loves that kind of stuff.  He is only about 10 minutes from my house so he has been able to go by and check on the kiddos during the day.  

I am so looking forward to being home Sunday.  I am taking a couple of days off and can't express how excited I am to sleep until my body is ready to wake up and take a short break from working 80+ hour weeks. I need to stop and get some cat treats before I get home because she has a tendency to pout and ignore me for a few days after I get home.